Class 
Book 




Jdfi&s: 



THE 

RURAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE 



GERMANY: 



CHARACTERISTIC SKETCHES OF ITS CITIES 

AND SCENERY, 

COLLECTED IN A GENEBAL TOUR, AND DURING A RESIDENCE IN THE 
COUNTRY IN THE TEARS 1S40 41 AND 42. 




>£«*-¥ 



4. 



BY WILLIAM HOWITT, 

)R OF "THE RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND.' "VISITS TO REMARKABL1 
"THE BOY'S COUNTRY BOOK." ETC. 



FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. F. SA1 



LONDON : 
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, 

PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
1842. 




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CONTENTS. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 

PAGE 

Chap. I. — Fleeting nature of these — The Rhine — First impression of German 
Towns — Their permanent characteristics — The Inns — Peculiar character of 
the Country — Its contrast to that of England — The Villages — The Country 
People ; their appearance, habits, wagons, and farming — No cattle to be 
seen in the fields— Grass-cutting for them in fields and road sides — German 
carriages, and style of posting — Costume of Postillions — A summer even- 
ing's view of town and country — Fire-flies — Singular mode of Fishing . 1 

GERMAN VILLAGES AND THEIR PEOPLE. 

Chap. II. — General aspect of a Village — The Brunnen — The Vines — The 
Churchyard; its peculiarities — The Old Castle — The Wine-press — View 
of Heidelberg — Peep into the Fields, with their various crops — Great 
growth of Tobacco — Hard labour of the cows in the wagons and at plough 
— Luxurious contrast of the life of English cows — Field Apparatus ; its 
simplicity and advantages — Groups of Children — Agricultural Jews — 
Scenes in the harvest-field . . . . . . .17 

PEOPLE IN THE WOODS AND VILLAGES. 

Chap. III. — Sunday stroll into the country — The Woods — Village of Guiberg 
— Dining in an orchard — Silence of the landscape from the absence of 
animals — Rookeries quite unknown in Germany — Affectionate reminis- 
cences of the English rook — Petersthal, a specimen of a German valley : 
its industry, its seclusion, its brook-side washing, bleaching, mills, and 
woods — The little Catholic chapel . . . • . .31 

OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

Chap. IV. — The Peasants chief possessors of the soil — Incessant labour of men, 
women, and children — Mode of Life — Heavy crops of fruit — Mainspring 
of German industry — Every thing converted to use — Effects of the Family 
division of lands — No Aristocracy resident in the country — Field-labours of 
the women — State of the interior of their houses — These compared with 
English cottages — Labours of the vineyard — Appearance of the vineyards 
in the Rhine lands — Progress of field labours in the summer — Hay and 
corn all housed — Costume and appearance'of the Peasant Girls — -Costume, 
and appearance of the Old Women — Reapers marching home with music 
— Scenes in the autumnal fields — Fruit-gathering — Vintage — Goethe's 
graphic description of a vineyard — Renewed labours of the Peasantry after 
harvest— Signs of the approach of winter . . , . .40 

OUT-OF-DOOE LIFE CONTINUED.— K1RCHWE1GH AND DANCE.RESORT. 

Chap. V. — The Wolfsbrunnen, near Heidelberg — Charming rural resort — 
Groups and scenes there — Its swarming trout-ponds — A Kirchweigh or 
Wake — Dancing of the common people — Contrast between an English and 
German Wake — Tilting, love-gingerbread and merriment — Burying the 
Wake . . . . . . ... .57 

b 






IV CONTENTS. 

OUT-OF-DOOK LIFE, CONTINUED.— OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 

PAGE 

Chap. VI. — Different circumstances have produced different out-of-door life to 
ours— German dislike of angling — German mode of riding — Hunting 
unknown — Different kinds of shooting — The Treib jagd, or Battue — 
Sporting in Austria and Bohemia — Abundance of game in those countries 
— Amount of different birds and vermin destructive to game, killed in the 
preserves near Vienna in 1841 — The preserves and pheasantries of Bohe- 
mia — Unparalleled amount of game killed in different years, from 1836 to 
1841, in the parks and preserves near Vienna, from official documents — 
Preserves in Moravia, Bohemia, etc., of different noblemen — General 
enjoyment of sporting in these countries — The roebuck, deer, and wild- 
boars of the forests — Costume of a German sportsman — The Jagers, or 
keepers — The Forest-master, and his duties — The Forest Police — Curious 
mistake — The out-of-door pleasures of Germans in general found in their 
public gardens with concerts — Aspect of the people in these — Knitting in 
public — Grand advantage of all German towns in public walks and gardens 
— This extends to every country town and almost village — Old castles and 
fine scenes similarly appropriated — All royal gardens open to the public — 
The same absence of exclusiveness on all private estates — Intense enjoy- 
ment of parties to and in these places by the people — This enjoyment 
carried to its height in the large, cities — The general autumnal pleasure- 
touring — Charms of German travelling . • . . .66 

OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE, CONTINUED.— FESTIVE PROCESSIONS, ETC. 

Chap. VII. — The Fasching, or Carnival — Procession at Mannheim in 1841 — 
— Cologne and its Carnival humours, 1842 — Complaints of the decline of 
the old Carnival pleasures with growing refinement — Description of this 
change in Munich — The English mania — Other religious festivities — 
Fastnacht Pretzel — Customs and songs of children at this season — Summer- 
day, with its old customs and children's songs — Procession of Winter and 
Summer — Collection of Easter eggs, and accustomed songs . . 85 

OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE, CONTINUED.— SYMPTOMS AND AMENITIES OF SPRING. 

Chap. VIII. — Breaking up of the Ice on the rivers — A striking scene — Hunt- 
ing March violets — -Boys with their pipes of bark — Sylvan band of such, 
with their songs — Delicious state of the country in April — -Children singing 
the old rhymes to the May-chaffer — Calling the stork back again — The 
Stork Song . , . . , . . .95 

OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE, CONCLUDED— PILGRIMAGES. 

Chap. IX. — General practice and picturesque effect of these Walfahrten, or 
Pilgrimages — Calvarien Bergen, or Hills of Calvary — Pilgrims on the way 
— Particulars of the grand Pilgrimage-day of St. Koclius on the Rhine . 103 

THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, OR HANDSWERKSBURSCHE. 

Chap. X. — The singular institution of the trade wandering — Appearance of 
these Wanderers on the highways — The origin of the practice — The Handi- 
craft Guilds — Their funds and regulations — The Herberges, or inns, of the 
Wanderers — Advantages and disadvantages — Practices and dangers on the 
way . . . . . . . . .122 

STUDENT'S FUNERAL. 

Chap. XI. — Services rendered by Students to the cause of liberty — Descrip- 
tion of a Student's Funeral — Commentaries of an Englishman thereon . 141 



4 






CONTEXTS. V 

CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 

PAGE 

Chap. XII. — Fondness of the Germans for Social Festivals, with garlands and 
poetical imagery — Christmas the festival of the children — Preparation of - 
presents — Appearance of numerous preparatory things in shopsand markets 
— The coming of Pelznichel — The arrival of Christmas-eve, and opening of 
the Christmas saloon, with all its glories, of Christmas-tree, gifts, and 
illuminations — What the Christ-kindchen really means — All classes set up 
their tree, from the Peasant to the Emperor — An old Carol — Beautiful 
Christmas Hymn of Riickert — Questions as to the effect of the fictions 
practised in this ceremony ....... 152 

NEW YEAR'S DAY. 

Chap. XIII. — Mode of celebrating it — Visit at midnight to the Professors in 
University cities — Domestic celebration of New Year's Eve — Dancing, 
gliih-wine — Salutation of " Prost Neu Jahr !" — Drinking to the New Year 
— Bringing in and reading the New Year's wishes — Old game of the season 
— The Gingerbread hearts — Midnight services in Catholic churches — New 
Year's gifts ... • 175 

SLEDGING. 

Chap. XIV. — Various social unions in the winter — Serious preparations for 
the severity of the Winter — All the world on sledges — Children's sports 
with sledges — Gaiety and ceremonies of sledging-parties — The snow-plough 
— The story of the Gardener and the Steward — The solitary Apothecary — 
The Wiirtemberg Landlord and his Sledging-party . . . 179 

SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GERMANS, AND ODDITIES OF ETIQUETTE. 

Chap. XV. — -German phlegm — Extraordinary instances of it — Overturn in the 

Black Forest . . . . . . . .197 

SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

Chap. XVI. — State of these before the War — Curious picture of these given by 

Kotzebue ......... 214 

SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS— CONTINUED. 

Chap. XVII. — These as now seen — Houses and domestic life of the Peasantry — 
- — Description of a German house in a town — Scene with a chimney-sweep — 
Early hours and mode of living — Knitting, spinning, cookery, and other 

accomplishments — Defect of Female Education — Social games and amuse 

meuts — Social unions — German servants — Servants' balls — Domestic festi- 
vals — Birthdays, weddings, betrothals, anniversaries — Peculiarities of 
German lovers — The Language of Flowers, and use of garlands . . 224 

CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY, IN A TOUR. 

Chap. XVIII 1. Heidelberg to Carlsruhe — Journey to Carlsruhe — Its 

silence — The palace, gardens, and old Forest of the Hardt — Grave of 
Stilling in the Friedhof . . . . . . .245 

2. Journey to Baden-Baden — La Favorite — Curious account of it — Baden- 
Baden — Beauty of the neighbourhood — Horrors of gambling — Gay scene 

at the Conversation-house — Out-of-door gaiety — Curious travelling family 251 

3. Journey by Wildbadto Stuttgard. — Scenery of the Black Forest — Castle 
of Eberstein, and the Miirgthal — Scenery of VVildbad — Costumes and 
beautiful wayside flowers — Stuttgard — Its characteristics — Studio of 
Dannecker — Interview with the artist — Goethe and Schiller — The Christ — 
Visit to Gustav Schwab .... ... 263 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY— continued. 

PAGE 

4. Journey to Munich by Tubingen, Ulm, and Augsburg. — Tiibingen — 
Visit to Uhland the poet — The Sehwabian Alps— Visit to Lichstenstein 
Castle — Able decision of a village Biirgermeister in our behalf — Lodging in 
a German Dorf — Sublime view of the Alps — Shrines, images, crosses, and 
singular spectacles of a Catholic country — First view of the Danube — Pea- 
sants and their costumes. Ulm — The splendid Cathedral and its curious 
history — The great Plains of Bavaria. Augsburg — Present appearance — 
Its ancient endowments — The Rath-Haus — Old Minster, witli its quaint 
figures on the gates — Its numerous altars and monuments — The Weber- 
Haus, with its frescoes, and other traces of its once great prosperity — Its 
present state — The Inn of the Drei Mohren — Extracts from its Fremden 
Biicher . . . . . . . . .279 

5. Munich. — The capital of modern German Art — Artistical achievements of 
the King — Consequences of them — Wonderful activity of Art in Munich — 
The boldness as well as beauty of its productions — The Theatre, Post-office, 
and New Palace, with their magnificent frescoes — Exquisite beauty of the 
Designs, from the Greek and German poets, and the Nibelungen Lied — 
Characteristics of the Munich school of art — Newer addition to the Palace 
— The Hof Capelle — The Ludwig's Kirche — Church of Maria Hilf — The 
Glyptothek, or Gallery of Sculpture — The Pinakothek, or Gallery of Paint- 
ing — The Leuchtenberg Gallery — The Atelier of Kaulbach and Schwan- 
thaler — The Hermann Schlacht — The Bronze Foundry of Stiglmaier — 
The Statues of the Electors — The gigantic statue of the Bavaria — Pleasure 
resorts of Munich — Folks Theatre — The Opera — Mass in the Frauenkirche 
— Singularvariety of Costumes here — The Miinchener-Tracht, etc. — Super- 
stitious spectacles in the Theatiner Kirche .... 311 

6. Journey through Salzburg and Linz to Vienna. — Tyrolean style of 
houses — Singular old wells — Plentiful shrines and crosses — Meet the 
Elector of Cassell — An old Bavarian inn — The pretty Kelnerins of this 
part of the country — -Curious town of Wasserburg — Large Farms — Peculiar 
mode of drying the crops of hay and corn — Castle of the robber-knight, 
Hans von Stein. Salzburg — Its [magnificent environs — Splendid scenery 
of the neighbouring Alps — Extreme Catholic character of the place — 
Singular display of Sculls in the Churchyard — The Peasantry — Beautiful 
country thence to Ischl — Splendid wayside flowers — Curious churchyard — 
Exquisite colour of the lakes amongst the mountains — A Tyrolean dance — 
Kissing the hand — Scenery of the Traunsee — Horse-railway to Linz — 
Austrian difficulties at Linz — The passport — Dining a la carte — Bill of 
fare — Perplexing coinage — The Peasantry — The Gipsy Kessel-flicker — 
Descent of the Danube — Characteristics of the Danube — Rapid increase of 
steam travelling on it . . . . . . 3-10 

7. Vienna. — Fine situation of it — Variety of people and costumes in its streets 
— Life and gaiety — Superiority of its paving, lighting, carriages, etc. to all 
other German towns — Rapid driving, and danger of walking the streets — 
The people devoted to pleasure — Their public gardens and conceits — Strauss 
and Lanner's bands — The Volksgarten, the Augarten, the various Cas- 
sinos, and dancing resorts — The fashionable round of the year — The 
Theatres — The pouring forth to pleasure-resorts in the country round — 
St. Stephan's Cathedral — The Palace — The Cabinet of Antiquities — The 
Cabinet of Natural History — The Imperial Library — The Arsenals — Hos- 
pitals of the Barmherziger Briider and Sch wester — The Belvidere, Lich- 
stenstein, and Esterhazy Galleries — The Stock im Eisen — Visit to the 
Wild-boar I'ark at Iliitteldorf — Social spirit of Vienna — Impressions of 
visitors — Characteristics of the Viennese ..... 363 

8. JoUKNEY TO Prague. — Singular train of market wagons at the gates of 
Vienna- Monotonous trad of country— Gipsy Children — Old Bohemian 
towns — Battle scenes — Picturesque pi ocessions on the Virgin Mary's birth- 
day Reminiscences of the horrible extirpation of Protestantism in the 
Thirtv Years' War — The Unknown Student .... 386 



CONTENTS. VII 

CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES AND SCEXmY-coniinued. 

PAGE 

9. Prague. — Fine general view— Historical interest — The Hradschin, with 

its palaces and recollections — Popular amusements — New chain-bridge 

The Farber Insel . . . . . . .394 

10. Journey through the Saxon Switzerland to Dresden. — A rough 
drive — Steam voyage of the Elbe — Characteristics of the Saxon Switzer- 
land — Charming excursion to the Kuhstall — True mode of enjoying this 
scenery • ♦....... 398 

11. Dresden. — Its quiet gentility — Its dinginess from coal smoke — The Gal- 
lery its great attraction — The Gallery of Canalettis — Splendid collections 
of jewels, china, etc. — The Opera and Schrceder Devrient — Visit to the 
artist Retsch at his vineyard— Album of glorious Designs presented by him 

to his Wife — The Friedhof — Peculiarities of German inns . . 403 

12. Visit to Herrnhut. — General character of the scenery and place — Remi- 
niscences of Count Zinzendorf, and the first settlers — Monument where the 
first tree was felled — Points of likeness between the Herrnhuters and the 
English Methodists — Profound silence of Herrnhut — Visit to the Brethren's 
and Sisters' houses — Their Church — • Their mode of worship — Their love- 
feasts — Their wonderful Missionary labours — Marriage by lot — Their Ceme- 
tery — Tombs of the first settlers — Ceremonies at funerals, and on public 
occasions — The Hutberg — The Direction-house — Flourishing aspect of 
the settlement — Populous district of Weavers between Herrnhut and 
Schandau ........ 410 

13. Journey to Leipsic and Berlin. — The great feature of the north of Ger- 

many, its vast monotonous plains — These now intersected by Railways — 
Miserable appearance of the celebrated Saxon sheep — Horse-flesh- eating 
Society at Tubingen. Leipsic — General characteristics — Auerbach's and 
Eckerlin's cellars — Vast sandy plains between Leipsic and Berlin . . 426 

14. Berlin — Strange site for a capital — The sinks of Berlin — The Royal Family 
haunted by mills — Splendour of the best part of Berlin — The Palace and 
Museum — Unter-den-Linden — Public buildings and monuments — Picture 
Gallery — Schinkel, the architect — Potzdam, with its delightful Scenery and 
Palaces, the paradise of Prussia — Rauch's effigy of the Queen Louise — Sans 
Souci — Frederick the Great and the Miller — Frederick and Voltaire — 
Severe calamities brought by Frederick on his country by the introduction of 
French infidelity — Military and Literary character of Berlin — Singular un- 
courteousness of the shopkeepers and lower classes of this city — The Ecken- 
steher of Berlin — Singular instances of German travelling regulations . 429 

15. The Harz Country — Climbing the Brocken. — Magdeburg and Halber- 
stadt — The Cathedral — Beetroot sugar-works — Old Father Gleim — Wild 
and stormy ascent of the Brocken — Stormy night there — The host's accounts 
of sudden tempests and travellers' adventures, and fatal occurrences through 
them — Frequency of the appearance of the Spectre of the Brocken — 
Laughable anecdote of an experimental traveller — Magnificent view from 

the mountain ........ 445 

16. The Harz Country. — Weimar and Jena. — Shiercke and Elend — Blan- 
kenburg and its scenery — The Rosstrappe — Alexisbad — Travelling without 
roads — Weimar, a little country town in a bleak district — Tombs of Her- 
der, Schiller, and Goethe — The Dead-house, and its apparatus — Visit to 
the Goethes. Jena, its bleak and wild character, antiquated air of town 
and university — Musicians piping to the market-people. Erfurt — cell of 
Luther — Another instance of the extraordinary German travelling laws — 
The Thuringia Forest — The Wartburg — Luther's Room in the castle — 
Fulda, Hanau, Frankfort, Heidelberg ..... 461 






VIII CONTENTS. 

LITERATURE. 

PAGE 

Chap. XIX. — State of Literature at present — The living Political Poets — Hoff- 
mann von Fallersleben, Anastatius Griin, Dingelstadt, Herwegh, etc. — 
Characteristics of the Poetry of Freiligrath — his translations from the Eng- 
lish — German Prose works of imagination — Their Romantic school — 
Tieck, Kerner, etc. — List of Female authors .... 471 

EDUCATION. 

Chap. XX. — Working of their National Schools — Actual state of Edu- 
cation amongst the Burgher classes and the people — Results of English 
and German practice — A Posting anecdote — The German Circulating 
Library — The Literature of the Peasantry — The German book-stall — 
Specimens of the reading of the Catholic peasantry — The little Spiritual 
Fountain of Grace, with twelve pipes — The little Roman book — The con- 
tents of the latter — The romantic and popular Folks Books . . 485 

RELIGION. 

Chap. XXI. — Absence of Sects in Germany — Causes of this — Melancholy 
spread of Infidelity — The Germans philosophized out of Christianity — 
Schelling's lectures on the subject — Announcement of the Prussian 
philosophers of their renunciation of Christianity, and their resolve to form 
an Association under the title of" Die Freien." .... 502 

CONCLUDING REMARKS ; POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 

Chap. XXII. — New era in Germany — The physical tendency — Their rapid 
advance, with steamers, railways, manufactures, and commercial regulations 
— The Bund — The Zoll-Verein — Its aspirations after a fleet and colonies — 
Workings of the spirit of freedom — Aims of different Parties — Causes 
which operate against rapid Political change — General Prosperity of the 
Country ......... 512 





It is only in the first moments in which 
you witness something which is entirely 
new to you, that you feel that novelty 
in all its vividness, and perceive really L 
how widely divided is the nature and 
aspect of what you then contemplate from the 
X objects of your former knowledge. Every hour 
that you continue to regard what strikes you 
with its newness, carries off that newness, and 
your impressions fade and bedim themselves in 
proportion. You are soon surprised to find 
how little there is to surprise you; how familiar all 
about you is become, as if you had conversed with it 
all your life. This is especially the case in regard to 



2 GERMANY. 

the novel aspect and manners of a foreign country. It is only by 
noting down on the spot, and at the moment, what strikes you, 
that you can secure the force of these first impressions; and when 
you afterwards refer to these notes, you are often no little astonished 
to find amid what really curious people and things you are existing, 
and yet how completely all the strangeness has vanished from your 
consciousness. In our own country, how much are we struck by 
the views which foreigners take of us, our native land, and native 
customs. We seem to behold ourselves as in a magic glass, where 
expressions of our countenances actually made invisible by daily 
exposure, are revived and recognised as startling and true. It 
was this fact which gave such a charm to the Sketch-Book of 
Washington Irving, and caused the Letters of Prince Piickler 
Muscau to be read with such avidity. 

As I wish to introduce my readers to Germany exactly in the 
manner in which I was introduced to it myself, and as they would 
first see it, and afterwards gradually grow acquainted with it, I 
shall devote a chapter or two, in the opening of this volume, to 
the description of my own first impressions then and there noted 
down. 

My entrance to the country was by the Rhine, the way by 
which the great bulk of travellers enter it, and certainly the most 
beautiful and impressive of all. You are thus introduced, at once, 
to that class of its natural scenery in which its natural beauty lies, 
its mountains and its rivers. Amongst these again, you behold, 
considered in all points of view, its noblest river, and mountains 
which, if not on the grandest scale, are, perhaps, the fairest average 
specimens of its mountains that can be met with. They have no 
pretence to compare with those portions of the Alps which belong 
to Germany, but they are about as lofty as most other of the German 
hills; are more varied in their aspect; are full of tradition; of 
evidences of past history and commotions; and, as a vine-land, you 
shall find nothing so extensive, so perfect, or so picturesque in any 
other quarter of the nation. 

Spite of all that has been written about the Rhine, from the 
glowing poetry of Childe Harold, which still remains the most 
descriptive, and most answering in the felicitous truth of its 
epithets to one's own feelings, down through the journals of hosts of 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. O 

travellers, to Fennimore Cooper's elaborate comparison of it with his 
native Hudson, in his Heidemnauer, it is much to say, that though 
many visitors are somewhat disappointed on first approaching the 
Rhinegau near Bonn, yet there are few who 'are not thoroughly 
enraptured with the full course of this scenery from the Seven 
Mountains to Bingen, and the more so, if they remain a few days 
on its banks, penetrate into its hidden valleys, or if they view it a 
second time. The great want about it is that of full-grown and 
noble wood; but this is a great, common, and growing want in 
Germany, where wood is the almost only fuel with which forty 
millions of people have to cook the year round, and to warm them- 
selves through their long and severe winter. But the loftiness and 
varying wildness of its hills ; its sky-seeking pinnacles of crag, on 
which are often perched the most picturesque of ruined, or yet 
habitable castles; its black precipices; its splintered and naked 
gigantic piles of rocks; its miles and scores of miles of hanging- 
vineyards, all in the neatest order of cultivation, and supported 
with terraces and walls on rocky and steep eminences, which bear 
testimony to the most incessant labour of ages; its wood-crowned 
summits; its delicious valleys opening right and left as you proceed; 
its green fields and gardens, full of happy-looking peasantry, on its 
river banks; its fine old ruins of castles and convents on the moun- 
tain heights; and towns, and towers, and villages strewn along its 
shores for scores and hundreds of miles, so quaint, so old-fashioned, 
so dimmed and darkened with the hues of antiquity, and yet so full 
of life and population; — it is impossible to witness all this without 
the deepest delight and enthusiasm; and, when you have seen many 
other and very glorious rivers, you shall still acknowledge that this 
is a true region of poetry and beauty. 

The river itself is a most noble and glorious river. The 
Thames, from London to the sea, and upwards to Richmond, is 
the grandest spectacle of the kind which the world ever has had 
or has yet to shew. The mighty and most wealthy and populous 
city on its banks, with all its world-influences, and its irrepressible 
activity; its masses of ships lying for miles on its surface, or 
coming in from, and going out to every region of the earth; the life, 
the stir, the flying steamers, the sounds of business and cries of 
mariners — it is no wonder that it fills all foreigners with inexpres- 

R 9. 



4 GERMANY. 

sible astonishment, and makes the Englishman proud of his native 
land and people. Then the beauty of the bordering fields and 
villages, and country mansions; and, as you pass above London, of 
these and of its princely gardens and delicious homes, is such as 
is nowhere else to be seen. But, for the river itself, its greatness 
lies in a comparatively short course. It is not for the river of an 
island to claim the extensive and continued size of a river of the 
continent, and which takes its source in the Alps. The island 
flood, though peerless in its lower course in all those attributes of 
greatness which a great people has heaped about it, soon decreases 
to a moderate though beautiful stream; and being accustomed to 
this circumstance, we islanders feel the same sentiment of admira- 
tion and surprise on ascending the Rhine for three or four hundred 
miles, which dictated those most expressive lines of Lord Byron — 

But thou exulting and abounding river, 
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow. 

It is this " exulting and abounding" character which is the 
great character of the Rhine. Far as you go, for several hundred 
miles, it is still large, full to the banks, vigorous in its current, and 
magnificent in the affluence of its waters. No receding tide leaves 
a hollow and slimy channel. As the steamer ploughs its way, its 
swell rushes, in living ripples, amongst the grass and hanging 
flowers on its margin, or scours in curling silver the black ada- 
mant of its rocks. People in gay costumes enliven its smiling 
vineyards; and a life of boats, trade barges, and rafts, moves every- 
where on its surface. The rivers of Germany are generally the 
great highways of its commerce, and its population gathers 
thickly on their banks. This is pre-eminently the case with the 
Rhine. 

When you land in its towns you then become sensible of their 
peculiar character, and of the life in their hotels. The bustle that 
appeared upon the stream, its banks and quays, here has disap- 
peared again. All is quaint, old, still, and none of the sweetest. 
You see, as you land, plenty of solemn custom-house officers, in 
half military dress, and well mustachioed. As you proceed through 
the streets, you find around you gabled and picturesque white 
buildings, old squares and markets, with avenues of linns, or of 
dwarf acacias; people, many of them m the garb of centuries ago; 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 5 

and dreadful pavements. Coleridge has celebrated the six-and- 
thirty stenches of Cologne, and the invention of Cologne water to 
cover them; but a wide acquaintance with German towns leaves me 
the conviction that Cologne can boast no more queer odours than 
any other of the towns of the nation ; for in most of them, as we 
shall have to shew, every street, almost every house, and every 
hour, has its own appropriate, peculiar, and by no means envi- 
able smell. The pavements, with a few exceptions, are of the most 
hobbly and excruciating kind. There appears no evidence of any 
systematic attention to them, or management of them. To pass 
through a German town or village in a carriage is one of the most 
rib-trying events in this life. But to walk through one is not 
much less hazardous. Russell, in his day, tells us, that to avoid 
being run over on the pave by a barrow, you often step into the 
peril of getting your head split with an axe, or your arm torn off 
by a saw, from the people who are cutting up piles of firewood 
before the doors. This is pretty much the case yet. The paves, 
where there are any, seem appropriated to every purpose but that 
of walking. There is a bit of pavement here, a bit there, or rather 
not a bit there. It looks as if ttie causeway was left entirely to the 
care, or want of care of the householders. Here is a bit of good 
pavement; in a few yards is a piece of the worst and most uneven 
pitching, evidently done ages ago. Here you go up a step, and 
there you go down one. If an Englishman, accustomed to his 
well-paved and well-regulated towns, were suddenly set down in a 
German town at night, he would speedily break his neck or his 
bones, put out an eye, or tear off a cheek. The towns, and that 
only on dark and moonless nights, are badly lit by lamps, hung, as 
in France, from a rope across the street. Here one twinkles, and 
at a vast and solitary distance glimmers another. Even Vienna is 
lighted up with oil; and Dresden, and one or two other towns, are the 
only ones where we have met with gas. All manner of trap-doors 
leading down into cellars are in the paves, and none of them very 
carefully levelled with the flagging or pebbles. Their covers often 
cock up their corners, faced with iron in such a way that you strike 
your toes most cruelly against them. All manner of flights of 
steps, from shops and houses, are set upon the pavement, are 
pushed out one-third of the width across them, and sometimes 



% 



6 GERMANY. 

wholly across them, so that a man whom daylight and a few trips 
over them had not made aware of them would blunder headlong. 
As he fell, a strong iron bar, about a foot long, sticking out of 
the wall of the house, would probably strike his face and give 
him a desperate wound. These bars of iron are what the worthy 
shopkeepers rear their shutters upon in the day time; and at night 
when the shutters are put up, they stand out naked from the wall 
about the height of your face or shoulders, and give you the most 
horrid shocks as you inadvertently strike against them. Then, 
every hundred yards, you are stopped by a great wood-heap, and its 
busy sawers and cleavers, or by a wagon or a carriage which is set 
on the trottoir to be out of the way ! 

These nuisances, which would not be tolerated in the worst- 
regulated country towns of England for a single week, here remain 
for ages. The Germans, accustomed to them, avoid them as we 
should avoid walking into a fire or a horse-pond; and when you 
point them out, are not at all surprised that such things should be, 
but that you should think them anything extraordinary. 

Such, and the overpowering smells, are the things which first 
arrest your attention in a German town; but of these towns we 
shall hereafter speak more particularly. The inns next become the 
objects of your notice. These are, for the most part, very large, 
and strike your mind with their great and naked-looking rooms; 
their great stone staircases, not particularly cleau ; their large table 
d'hote rooms, with painted walls and ceilings, naked boarded floors, 
lots of smoking people, and muslin curtains with festooned hang- 
ings, of alternating colours, often of those belonging to the State 
in which they are. Their uncarpeted chambers, but with generally 
very cleanly scoured floors in panels of different-coloured wood, the 
main part, however, being mostly of deal; their little beds, or rather 
cribs, without posts or curtains; and their peculiar cooking, and 
serving of the table, are what first fix your attention. All these 
we shall, hereafter, speak more fully of; and therefore, now, we 
advance into the country. 

Here you look in vain for anything like the green fields 

/ ' and hedge-rows of England, with their scattered trees, groups of 

beautiful cattle or flocks grazing in peace, anil sweet cottages, 

farm-houses, and beautiful mansions of the gentry. It is all one 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 7 

fenceless and ploughed field. Long rows of trees on each side of 
the roads are all that divide them from the fields, and in the south 
these are generally fruit trees. The beauty of Germany lies only, 
or with few exceptions, amongst its hills. There, its woods and 
green valleys, and clear streams, are beautiful; but from one region 
of hills to another extend only huge and open plains, marked with 
the road-side lines of trees. The population is not scattered along 
as in England, over hill and dale, in groups and single residences, 
of various grades and degrees of interest ; while the luxuriant 
fences, the meadows and uplands charming with grass and flowers, 
old, half-hidden lanes, and trees standing here and there of the 
noblest size, and in the freedom of natural beauty, make the plain- 
est part of the country enchanting. All here is open and bald; 
the people are collected into villages of the most prosaic kind, and 
no gentry reside amongst them. In fact, what we call country 
life in England is here unknown. 

For ourselves, we became at once struck with this as we drove 
over the plain from Mannheim to Heidelberg. There is no part of 
Germany where the open plains are more richly cultivated, and 
which, with their way-side fruit trees, have a more clothed appear- 
ance, but even here how striking was the difference to the country 
in England ! As there is one general character of country, of 
towns, of manners and appearances, throughout Germany, we shall 
here confine ourselves, where we are dealing with generals, to the 
neighbourhood of Heidelberg, for the reason given above, and 
afterwards, in various parts, point out specific differences and 
variations. 

Far and wide the country, without a single fence, covered with 
corn and vegetables, as seen from the heights which bounded it, 
presented a most singular appearance to an English eye. Its pre- 
dominating colour, at that time of the year, was that of ripening- 
corn, but of different hues, according to its different degrees of 
ripeness, and the different kinds of grain. This is not planted in 
those vast expanses which you see in the corn-farms of Northum- 
berland and Lincolnshire, but in innumerable small patches and 
narrow stripes, because belonging to many different proprietors. 
Some is also sown in one direction, and some in another, with 
patches of potatoes, mangel-wurzel, kidney-beans, etc.. amongst it, 



8 GERMANY. 

so that it presented to the eye the appearance of one of those straw 
table-mats of different colours which one has seen. 

Here and there yon saw villages lying in the midst of the corn 
plain, and large woods, but not a hedge, and few scattered trees; 
the long rows of those marking out the highways, being the only 
dividing lines of the country. As we passed these trees, we 
observed that they were principally apple, pear, plum, cherry, and 
walnut trees. One could not help feeling how these trees would 
be plundered in England, being set, as it were, by the very road, 
for that purpose; and, indeed, here thorns fastened round the 
boles, and stuck between the branches of the cherry trees, where 
the fruit was ripening, spoke clearly of marauders. Fruit of all 
kinds was in abundance, and the heavy crops that are common 
here were indicated by the contrivances to prevent the branches 
being rent off. Some had their main branches held together by 
strong wooden clamps, others were propped with various poles; 
others, especially the plum trees, had their boughs tied up, and 
supported by ropes of chestnut bark. Some of these slips of bark 
were so low that mischievous urchins, if so disposed, could easily 
have cut them. 

We passed through several of the Dorfs, or villages. They had 
a primitive, heavy, and thoroughly agricultural air. The houses 
are built of stone, large and heavy, and each having a great round- 
headed gateway leading into a sort of inner court, or farm-yard. 
We observed numbers of women at work in the fields, without shoes, 
stockings, bonnets, or caps. They were healthy, contented, sun- 
burnt creatures, many of them picturesque enough for any painter 
of primitive life. What, however, riveted our attention quite as 
much, were the country wagons and horses. The wagons are the 
oddest old jumbling things imaginable. What a contrast to the 
jolly fat horses and ponderous painted wagons of the English farmer ! 
The set-out of a first-rate English farmer or miller, to say nothing 
of the wagons and drays of the London brewers, cannot frequently 
be of less value than 300/. Most of these vehicles may be worth 
from five pounds to five shillings, and are drawn by two or three 
horses a-brcast; the horses of a lightish bay or black, of a slouching 
look and gait, and harnessed in ropes; if there be four, the two 
foremost a long way a-head of the other two. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 9 

The general construction of these wagons may be said to be 
that of a plank for the bottom, and a good wide ladder for each 
side, sloping outwards in the form of a V. There is, however, a 
good deal of variety amongst them : some are rudely boarded up at 
the sides; some have alining, or inner body of wicker-work; some 
are larger, some smaller; but all are unpainted — the colour of the 
earth, or of old wood. They have a piece of wood for a drag; their 
wheels are kept on by a crooked pole, the point of which passes 
through a hole in the end of the axle; and they have often a fiat 
wicker-work basket, or wooden box, hung under them for hay. 
They come rattling and jarring along in the oddest disorder imagin- 
able. Here comes one wagon with one horse, of course, on one 
side of the long great pole, with nothing on the other; here another 
with three horses abreast, and straggling so far apart as to fill the 
whole road, and make you look about to see how they are to pass 
without your being run over. They are generally on the trot, 
driven by a Bauer, in his proper and peculiar costume; — in Baden, 
a large black cocked-hat, a long blue coat or blue jacket, a pair of 
blue hempen trousers, and strong boots. They sit in front of their 
wagon, and, with pipe in mouth and heavy whip in hand, go on 
smoking and cracking their whips over their horses' heads. All the 
drivers, in fact, in this country, whether of wagons, eilwagons, 
coaches, omnibuses, stage-wagons, or of the indescribable variety of 
odd vehicles that you see, keep up an eternal smoking and cracking 
of whips. The postillion with his four or six horses, setting out 
with some nobleman's carriage, goes off making the street resound 
with the thunder of his whip, which is only exceeded in noise by 
the clatter of his horses and the rumble of his vehicle over the 
rough stones. 

But we must not yet leave the Bauer and his wagon for the 
postillion — of him more anon. The Bauers come trotting along to 
the market-town with all kinds of country loads; bags of corn, 
hampers of fruit and vegetables, straw and hay. Often, but more 
frccp-iently in returning, they have loads of country people, present- 
ing the most varied groups and dresses; — women, old and young, 
smart and homely, without caps or bonnets, or in the little close 
things which are cap and bonnet both; and men of all sorts are seen 
in these wagons, sometimes from the gentleman to the sunburnt 



10 GERMANY. 

labourer. The postillion, returning with his horses, ties them to 
the tail of the wagon, gets in, and, with his miscellaneous com- 
panions, sits laughing and chatting. Every one, or nine out of 
ten, has in his mouth his long pipe with a large earthenware head, 
and all are smoking and merry. Hood, in his " Up the Rhine," 
has not in the least exaggerated the use of the pipe, as he says, 
here "wir alle rauchen" — we all smoke! Every man you meet, 
gentle or simple, carries his pipe or his cigar, " and smokes along 
the plain," as Homer describes the horses of his heroes to do. 
The student, the shopkeeper at his door, the sawyer at his saw, the 
man who breaks stones on the road, the fisherman in his boat, 
the postillion, the coachman, the wagoner, the bauer, every one 
carries a pipe in his hand; or, if he have not a hand at liberty, it 
hangs in his mouth as if it had grown there with his teeth. Nay, 
the big boy sports his pipe often ; and the pipe-shops are amongst 
the most conspicuous in the towns. The windows are rilled with 
them, having heads gaily painted, chiefly with female portraits, so 
that the smoker may at once feast his eyes with beauty, and his 
other senses with tobacco — a perfect German Elysium. 

But we have got lost in the cloud of national smoke; we must 
return to the Bauers. Some of their wagons are drawn by two 
bullocks, or by two patient cows, which are yoked by the head. 
Some of them are yoked by two short yokes, which allow their 
heads some freedom, but more commonly by one yoke, which, 
going over the backs of their necks, generally with a little quilted 
pad under it and a band in front, keeps their heads fast and as 
steady together as if they were screwed to their yoke. These 
patient animals arc generally fawn-coloured, and strongly bring to 
your mind the chariots and cars of the ancients, which were drawn 
by just such cattle, just so yoked. These, by the bye, arc the only 
cattle that you see. In Holland or Belgium you see cattle in the 
meadows; but as you advance up the Rhine you begin to wonder 
at the silence of the landscape. Not a sheep, a horse, or a cow, is 
to be seen, '['he mountain tops are covered with wood, instead of 
Hocks, as in England. The slopes are covered with vineyards. 
Von ask where the cattle are? Yon are answered, in the stalls. 
Where are the sheep? I luler the c;nv of shepherds, somewhere — 

heaven knows where! you never come across them. It is only on 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 11 

the great plains of the north that you afterwards find large flocks 
and herds, under the care of keepers, kept close together; for as 
they have no fences, they are under the momentary peril of their 
making ravages on their neighbours' crops. We looked from the 
tops of the mountains about Heidelberg into the Odenwald; — all 
there was woody hills, without the apparition of a sheep or ox, 
except such of the latter as were at work in the wagons. We felt 
astonished at the silence of nature. Not a horse, a cow, a sheep, 
a goat, and, what is more singular, rarely a bird to be seen. In 
England you see and hear birds everywhere. Nothing gives so 
much life to the country. Large flocks of rooks spread them- 
selves on the plains, or raise their hoarse din round the mansion 
of the nobleman and the gentleman. Numbers of pheasants and 
partridges are seen running here and there, by wood sides and 
in corn lands. The wood-pigeons dart out of the trees as you pass, 
or are seen coming in flocks from the fields. Here, you see none, 
or next to none, of all these; and we suspected, as it proved, that 
the peasants, who are the proprietors of the lands, keep down these 
creatures for fear of their crops. 

The keeping up of the cattle presents you with a new feature in 
rural life. As the quantity of land left for grass is very small, the 
grass is proportionably economised. The little patches of grass 
between woods and in the open parts of the woods, the little strips 
along the river-banks, and even in gardens and shrubberies, are 
carefully preserved for this purpose. You see women in these 
places cutting grass with a small hook or smooth-edged sickle, and 
carrying it away on their heads in baskets for their cows. You see 
the grass on the lawns of good houses, on grass-plats, and in 
shrubberies, very long and wild; and when you ask why it is not 
kept closer mown, the reply is, that it is given to the milk-woman, 
often for a consideration, who cuts it as she wants it. You see 
other women picking the long grass out of the forests, or under the 
bushes on the hill-sides where the slopes have been mown, for the 
same purpose. Nettles, chervil, cow-parsnip, which in England 
are left to seed and rot, are all here cut for the imprisoned cow. 
You go doAvn to the river-side to fish, and a peasant is soon with 
you, chattering and gesticulating, pointing to your feet and to the 
grass. It is to Jet you know that you are not to angle there, because 






12 GERMANY. 

it treads down the grass; and accordingly, in Germany, with rivers 
full of fish, you seldom see an angler; if you do, he is pretty sure 
to be an Englishman. 

In this chapter of miscellanies, we must not, however, omit 
what strikes every English eye very curiously, and that is the con- 
dition of the general run of carriages that you see. Except in the 
chief cities, never were such a multitude of shabby conveyances 
seen — such ancient, rusty, and dusty affairs! Their eilwagons, or 
coaches, which run stages, are huge and lumbering, as if built for 
everlasting endurance, and not for speed. Their private carriages, 
and those for hire, such of them as are closed, have glass doors 
and fronts in mahogany frames, and are capable of being thrown 
open. The hinder side of the entrances are so sloping, that you 
give your heads some hearty knocks every time you get in, till you 
get used to them. Many of these seem as if they had never been 
cleaned since they were made. They are dashed, worn, and covered 
with layers of dust, so thick that they seem to have been travelling 
through all the pothery roads of the continent. You are surprised 
to see the odd, old-looking phaetons and other vehicles, in which 
well-dressed people are going about, swinging and jarring along 







with their slouching horses and rope traces. Mr. Montague 
Thomas, a Dorsetshire gentleman with whom we became acquainted 
on our journey, said, humorously, that he never could persuade 
himself that they had ever been new, but had been built out of old 
carriages at first. The servants driving, or sitting behind, are 
as odd looking. Everywhere you miss the neatness, brightness, 
and completeness of appointment of English carriages and 
equipages. 

The style in which post-horses are furnished by government to 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. L3 

the very highest personages, struck us most singularly the very first 
clay that we arrived at Heidelberg. There was a cry, C( Make way ! 
make way! the Duke of Brunswick and other nobles are coming!" 
Three carriages drove smartly up to the hotel, two with four horses, 
and that containing the Duke with six. But with what a ludicrous 
air of mingled meanness and pretence! There was a sudden 
scuffle and running amongst the waiters, and the people in the inn 
all rushing out to the gateway. There was a great lashing and 
cracking of whips, and trampling of horses, and in came teams of 
shaggy animals in ropes, with yellow postillions and stout car- 
riages, out of which leapt several very tall men with caps and 
sticks, M r ho looked sufficiently consequential, and rapidly mounted 
up stairs. How strange it was thus to see Dukes dragged in 
with ropes and slouching horses with long manes and tails; 
such a set-out, that had it appeared in London, would have 
had all the lads of the streets after it. You may imagine the 
knowing urchins of London, how they would point to the harness 
with grinning faces, and cry, " Look, Jack, look ! what a go ! ropes 
to carriages ! ropes to carriages ! And see at those yellow fellows, 
with the red cauliflowers hanging at their backs ! " 

These were the postillions in the Baden post costume; a 
bright yellow jacket, cut like a foot-soldier's coat, turned up with 
red, and with red seams. Under their left arm a horn, and at 
their backs, the tassels of the horn-belt, exactly like two great 
cauliflowers dipped in a red dye, which go swinging and bobbing 
at their backs as they drive. When it is wet or cold, and they are 
obliged to put on a great coat, you see these red cauliflowers pulled 
up and sticking out at the side of their neck. They wear besides 
great jack -boots, a black glazed hat with a broad white band, and 
carry a heavy whip. Such, only arrayed in different colours, as 
scarlet, blue, white, etc., according to the colours of the different 
states, are the postillions pretty much all over Germany. 

We may close this chapter with an evening scene, which 
gave many new impressions, and those of a more poetical and 
southern character than I had anticipated ; and yet all such as are 
sure, amongst those more ordinary and ludicrous ones already 
noticed, to present themselves to the stranger, and agreeably to 
affect him. 



14 GERMANY. 

The first evening of our arrival being very warm, I walked out 
through the city, and some little distance into the country beyond 
it. Heidelberg is surrounded by high woody hills. It consists of 
one long street, the Hauptstrasse, or High-street, and short narrow 
streets which run off at right angles on each hand ; on one side 
bounded by the river, on the other by the feet of the hills. The 
scene, as you move along, is novel and beautiful. The houses, as 
in all German towns, are mostly built with large gateways in their 
centres. Over these are balconies, generally filled with flowering- 
shrubs. The houses are all white, or of light shades of colouring, 
as of green and grey. The windows are all furnished with lattices, 
which are so contrived as to serve various purposes ; they may be 
closed, and shut out light and much cold. When the weather is 
warm they may be thrown open, or may be closed, yet with raised 
bars, and admit light, without too great a glare or too much heat. 
Or if it be very bright, by means of hinges inserted between the 
outer and inner frame, they may be elevated at the bottom, and 
form a projecting shade. 

As I advanced up the street this evening, these lattices were all 
thrown open, and numbers of well-dressed and handsome women 
were seated at them. Music came from numerous houses, accom- 
panied by occasional voices of great sweetness. Though it was 
ten o'clock, people swarmed in the street, walking up and down, 
especially the students, whose swaggering air, open frock-coats, 
little caps, like common travelling caps, with a leathern shade in 
front; their bush of hair, their inseparable pipes, their stout sticks 
and numerous spectacles, left no doubt about their identity. This 
street is their great promenade, and was filled with them. 

As I passed the cross streets, the high hills at their termina- 
tions had a striking aspect, appearing with their woods to overhang 
the ciiy; and many picturesque dwellings shewed themselves 
perched in their --lens ami leafy sides. The huge ruins of the 
ancient castle towered aloft on the right. 1 passed one or two little 
squares- one the Museum I'latz, in which the Museum, or place 
of general entertainment, and the University stand: another, the 

Karl PlatZ, surrounded by those engrafted acacia trees with round 
heads, 80 much admired in this country. The u hole scene, with 
its shops and people, had a thoroughly continental and ver\ southern 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 15 

air. As I advanced into the suburbs along the side of the Nectar, 
the southern character became more striking. Houses of an old- 
fashioned kind stood at the foot of the high rocky hills. In their 
orchards and beneath their trees sate various parties enjoying them- 
selves, with lamps and wine-bottles on their tables, and the smoke 
of their long pipes curling up around them. But what was to me 
the most novel and beautiful feature of the scene, was the host of 
lovely fire-flies soaring about on every side, with all the emerald 
light of the glowworm, illuminating the dusky way, and floating 
amongst the trees, and up the hill-sides to the highest steeps. I 
had never seen them before, and was not expecting to see them 
there, and the surprise and pleasure were proportionably great. 
Groups of children were coming towards the city singing in 
chorus, and the whole scene had a character, new, beautiful, and 
poetic. 

Even at that late hour an old man was fishing in the Neckar, 
with one of those nets so different to what are used in England. 
In Rotterdam I saw a man standing on the wall of a bridge in the 
midst of the city, throw a net, which had a rope fastened to its 
centre, and which in descending, spread itself out and covered a 
circumference of a few yards. This being heavily loaded so as to 
go suddenly to the bottom, he allowed it to remain for a few 
seconds, in order that any fish under it might become entangled in 
it, and then drew it up with wonderful success. This man, however, 
as is common all over Germany, was fishing on a different principle. 
Those who have ascended the Rhine have seen, here and there, a 
solitary man standing by the river-brink, with a long stout pole 
supported on a boat, or on a frame set in the water, and moved by 
a swivel at the top of the frame, so that he could elevate his pole 
or depress it at his pleasure by leverage, that is, by weighing on its 
end, while he had a rope to this end, by which, when it ascended 
into the air, on the withdrawal of his pressure, he could pull it 
down again at will. At the other end of his pole he had a flat 
square net of a few yards in diameter, suspended by two bows from 
this pole, and this net he let go to the bottom, and there lie till any 
good-natured fish came and laid themselves upon it, when he hoisted 
his net out of the water and took them. A priori one would never 
have imagined fish so obliging, or so abundant, as to be taken in 



16 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 



quantities by so simple a means, — but no fishing is so common 
as this throughout Germany. In the smaller streams the pole and 
the net are so light that they are lifted entirely by hand, and are 
dropped into the water from boats in all directions. Thus was the 
old man fishing in this evening's walk, giving another peculiar 
feature to the dusky but delightful scene. 





©Kl&EPTI^ 00c 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS CONTINUED.— GERMAN VILLAGES 
AND THEIR PEOPLE. 



Amongst those things which make a vivid impression on strangers 
in a new country, the abodes, habits, and pursuits of the country 
people are not only some of the very first, but the most interesting. 
You have there simple nature in the character which it has worn 
for ages. You speedily penetrate, unobstructed by forms and 
conventional novelties, into the whole circle and system of their 
existence, and feel a lively sympathy with those who make so large 
a proportion of the people of the land, especially as you compare 
their form of life and comforts with those of the same class in your 
own country. Here too we cannot help admitting the idea that we 
behold a picture, no doubt much refined and improved, compara- 
tively rude as it yet remains, of the life of those Saxons who 
emigrated in such swarms into England, and have left us so many 

c 



18 GERMAN VILLAGES 

traces in our laws, speech, and opinions, of their once lordship 
there. 

Early in July, soon after our arrival, we walked to Handschuhs- 
heim, a farming village about two miles from Heidelberg, on the 
Darmstadt road, at the foot of the hills, and on the edge of the 
great coi'n plain. This village affords many glimpses of the rural 
life of this country; and it and the others which follow, with all 
the scenes and people belonging to them, may be taken as speci- 
mens of tens of thousands scattered through Germany, many of 
which, in all parts, we have since seen. 

This village is built in the same massy style as the others we 
passed through, and, indeed, as German villages in general. Almost 
every house has its great round gateway, as if bearing evidence of 
the Saxon love of those round heavy arches which are the distin- 
guishing feature of the ecclesiastical architecture of their ancestors; 
and most have their ample farm-yard. All German houses are 
large; space seems no object. Through the whole place there is a 
curious mixture of rudeness and attempt at ornament. Most houses 
are heavy and rude, and weather-worn ; but others, again, bright, 
neatly painted, and their upper windows filled with gay flowering 
plants. Here an old framed house painted up in the most tawdry 
flaunting manner, in imitation of yellow and red marble, and of 
Corinthian pillars. Here quantities of little funny children sitting 
in the dust, with bare legs, and the girls with plaited tails of hair 
reaching down their backs. The village is wonderfully supplied 
with streams of water, which, like all their villages at the foot of 
hills, are furnished with fountains in the shape of ever-running 
pumps, and large stone troughs or receiving-basins, on which are 
painted boards, warning every one against muddying or defiling 
the water. At these fountains, or brunnens, the women, as they 
always are, were plentifully congregated. In fact, they are the 
great gossiping places of the village. Accordingly Goethe, the 
great painter of German life, brings Gretchen, in his "Faust," 
there in her trouble and impending disgrace, and makes her hear 
news which strikes sensibly home to her own condition. She and 
another damsel, Lieschen, appear at the brunnen with their jugs. 
Here the conversation winch fills her with so much trouble, com- 
mences in true gossip style : thus — 



AND THEIR PEOPLE. 19 

Lieschen. Hast thou heard nothing ahout Barbelchen ? 
Gretchen. Not a word. I go so very little out of doors. 
Lieschen. 'Tis fact : Sybilla told it me to-day. 

She's played the fool herself at last — 

And so end all her fine and lady airs! 

These streams are also made to turn mills, whose large wheels 
were revolving in the street. Both women and men were very 
civil; the latter doffing their caps, and all, as you passed, 
saluting you with " good-day." 

Everywhere vines were trained. They are grown on the sides 
of the houses, and at the upper story are carried out in the manner 
of a verandah, by large iron stays. They are carried by frames of 
wood over narrow lanes, and entrances to yards; over sheds and 
hovels; every possible spot is made useful. They are grown even 
on the walls of the church, and those of the churchyard were lined 
with them. 

We entered this churchyard, and though I shall give a particular 
notice of the characteristics of German churchyards, we may here 
take a passing view of this, as forming part and parcel of a German 
Dorf. It exhibited the same mixture of rudeness and adornment 
as the rest of the village. At the head of almost every recent grave 
stood a slight wooden cross, the triangular 
ones being catholic; and, indeed, these black 
crosses stand thickly in all such places. On 
many were planted roses and other flowers. 
Some were fenced round with a trellis, and 
planted with carnations. But at the same time the bones of the 
dead lay about in a shocking manner. Where graves had been 
newly made, fragments of bone, numbers of teeth, and even sculls 
nearly whole, remained on the surface. We observed, at the base 
of the church, a large hole, descending into a vault, which had a 
strange appearance. 

Some of the epitaphs were curious. There was one written on 
a paper which was framed and glazed, and set upon a slight strip 
of wood, which might altogether have been carried away very readily 
in one's hand. One epitaph in its general use appeared to be the 
parallel of that universal one in England, beginning — 

Weep not for me, my parents dear, 
I am not dead, but sleeping here. 

C 2 




20 GERMAN VILLAGES 

I copied this specimen of it from a little oval tablet, surrounded 
by a sprigged border, on a carnation-planted grave. 

Magdelena heis ich 
von dieser Welt abreis ich, 
ich sag meinem Vater, Mutter, 
und Schwestern, gute nacht; 
Ich will sehen was Jesus macht. 

That is, " Magdalene I am called. From this world I travel. 1 
say to my father, mother, and sisters, good night ; I will see what 
Jesus does." 

The orthography and grammar of this and the rest are exactly 
on a par with those of our country churchyards. They do riot 
strike us with any splendid evidence of the effects of modern 
popular education in Germany. Here is another. 

Fruh, zu fruh, bist du von uns geschieden 
Fruh umschlost dich stille grabesnacht 
Schlummre sanft bis zu dem Evigden Fiieden 
Einst mit uns dein frommer Geist erwacht. 

"Early, too early, hast thou departed from us; early did the 
still grave-night enclose thee. Sleep softly, till one day thy pious 
spirit shall awake with us to the everlasting peace." 

This was to Anna Barbara somebody, who died in her youth. 

Near the east end of the church we observed a tombstone with 
a large heart-shaped escutcheon, and on it an outspread hand. 
On the church door, and again on a door in the village, we observed 
the same. This was, we found, the crest of the ancient lords of 
the place, a glove or handschuh, from which the place takes its 
name. At the farther end of the village are the remains of the 
old castle of the lords of Handschuhsheiin, or in English, Gloveham, 
where, some time ago, occurred this singular circumstance. The 
clergyman was walking in the ruins with the proprietor, when 
striking upon a wall with his stick, and remarkiug that it sounded 
hollow, workmen were senl for, who broke into the wall, and found 
a narrow cell, in which was seated the skeleton of an ancient knight 
in bis armour, who, in some former age, had probably been taken 
captive by his mortal enemies, the owners of the castle, and there 

built up alive. The armour was complete, and is now preserved 

at Carlsruhe, but the hones soon crumbled to dust. 






AND THEIR PEOPLE. HI 

In an outbuilding we saw a most ponderous wine-press of oak, 
where probably the wine of the village has been prepared for 
generations, from the picturesque vineyards on the hills above 
the village. These hills form part of the celebrated line of the 
Bergstrasse, so much admired by travellers from Frankfort to 
Heidelberg. Heidelberg lies in the opening of the valley, where 
the Neckar, after a course of thirty miles of beautiful scenery, 
amongst the hills of the Odenwald, pours out into the plain. 
These hills crowned with woods, and their sides clothed with richest 
vineyards overlook the town on all sides, except on that next the 
plain. On the sides of these hills, and amid these terraced vineyards, 
and beech and chestnut woods, the inhabitants have very pleasant 
orchards and gardens, and garden-houses perched aloft, themselves 
in green and leafy nooks, yet giving extensive views over the town, 
the river, and the plain below, to the distant Haardt mountains. 
Eight and left of the city, on the highest points of the hills, the 
traveller sees two towers standing on high, as the watch-towers of 
the place. One is the ruin of St. Michael's chapel, the other a 
lofty look-out, called the Kaiser-Stuhl, or Emperor's-seat, to each 
of which, through the woods, ascend delightful walks. 

The hills, where the Neckar, just below the town, issues to 
the plain, extend right and left in a pretty direct line, still clothed 
with vineyards. Along the plain, at the foot of these, turning our 
back on the village of Handschuhsheim, of which we have just spoken, 
towards the end of July, we walked to the village of Rohrbach, 
about two miles from the lower end of Heidelberg. The people 
were busy in the corn, and the scene was very animated and very 
curious. It was a splendid morning; and the plain was full of 
sunshine, which brought out all the lights and shades of the vine- 
clad hills on our left, and all the different colours of the crops and 
the costumes of the peasantry. The yellow expanses of corn were 
scattered with groups of reapers, and with ploughmen ploughing up 
with their teams, mostly of a couple of cows, the land the moment 
the crops were removed from it, for turnips. Wagons, drawn by 
cows and bullocks, were standing in other places ready to be loaded, 
and others came slowly along with their loads towards the town. 
The whole scene reminded us of the reaping of scriptural times, 
and must be much of the same character. As in Judea, there are 



22 GERMAN VILLAGES 

no fences, but merely landmarks — stones set down at the termina- 
tion of every man's property. The land divided into its little lots 
must be much as it was in Judea, where the family property was 
inalienable, and subject to constant divisions and subdivisions. 
You therefore see no jolly teams of horses, drawing ploughs of the 
last and most approved construction, as in England. The plough- 
men leisurely " whistling o'er the lea," and other men finishing 
the cultivation of the wide field, with all the scientific apparatus, 
scarifiers, rollers, drills, etc., as with us; but peasants, chiefly with 
their cow-teams, and ploughs, harrows, and wagons, of the most 
primitive construction, clearing their crops from their little lots, 
and ploughing up the same in all directions. 

All amongst these lie those green crops which I have men- 
tioned, and which, as you approach any town or village, become 
so predominant over the corn as to produce the effect of a market- 
garden. These are chiefly mangel-wurzel, a German name, oddly 
enough unknown in Germany, but here called dick-ruben; hemp, 
of which great quantities are grown and spun by the women in 
winter, for sheeting, shirting, and the blue stuff for the summer 
jackets and trousers of the men, and various garments for the 
children; great plots of poppies, chiefly for oil, which, when in 
bloom, as then, make a beautiful show, in great expanses of mingled 
purple, red, and lilac. Besides these are plots of hops, cabbages, 
rows of kidney-beans, potatoes in plenty, and hundreds of acres of 
tobacco. It would have been wonderful, indeed, if in Germany, 
where there is almost as much smoke from tobacco as from the 
chimneys of their houses, this were not the case. It flourishes, 
indeed, most beautifully; and with its rich green colour and luxu- 
riant leaves, makes to the eye one of the most pleasing portions of 
the crop. It is said to be as fine as any in the world, and that. 
much of it goes to Spain and Holland, to be manufactured into 
cigars, which not only go thence to England, as Spanish and 
Havanna cigars, but actually come back hither dubbed with those 
recommendatory titles. A great portion is bought by the Emperor 
of Austria. 

Indian corn is also grown in great quantities, but chiefly fer 
feeding of swine and geese, being seldom or over used for household 
purposes. It appears to flourish here as well as it possibly can in 



AND THEIR PEOPLE. 23 

America. You see very little of the dwarf kind, cultivated in 
England under the name of Cobbett's corn; and that in gardens. 
The prevalent kind is large, is of the richest green, and five or six 
feet in height. It is planted out about three feet asunder each 
way. 

We have described the wagons of the peasantry. They are 
much of the same kind as prevail in Italy and France. Primitive 
and simple as they are, they are made to carry a good load of corn 
home. As the wagon is of this shape V, the load is also topped 
up in the same way, so as to form in a front or hind view a diamond 
figure. The load is secured by a pole along the ridge, 
which is held down tightly by ropes at back and front, 
and often by two pieces of upright wood at the back. 
Thus secured, their two milch cows, yoked by the head, 
draw home their harvest. 

It must be remarked that these wagons are very light and elastic; 
and, especially as they are cheaply constructed, might be introduced 
in England to the great advantage of small proprietors, as well as 
for general use, where the country is hilly and the roads rocky. 
They will bend in an uneven way like a snake, and their lightness 
makes them far more fit for many purposes than our heavy and 
unyielding, and much more expensive, carts. For such districts as 
Scotland, Wales, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the hilly tracts 
of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, they would be admirably adapted. 





It is quite repulsive to our English feelings to see the manner 
in which the cows are worked in this country. An English lady 
observed to a German one, that of all things she would not like to 
be a German woman of the common class, or a German cow, for 
they were both unmercifully worked. The German lady thought it 
a good answer to say, that she certainly would in this, as in any 



24 GERMAN VILLAGES 

other country, prefer being a lady to an ordinary woman, and that 
she should not choose to be a cow at all. The English lady here 
again rejoined, " but of all cows, not a German cow/'' In England, 
that paradise of countries, the cow is a privileged and most luxurious 
animal. She lies down in green pastures, and by the still waters, 
at perfect leisure. In summer, she is half buried in plenty. In 
beautiful herds, — fair as those herds of Apollo, which fed in the 
meadows of Trinacria or of Asphodel, — they graze the most famous 
pastures in the world, and present to the eye of the lover of the 
country, one of the most lovely spectacles which the country can 
shew. They slowly rove from one portion of their extensive bounds 
to another, or lie down amid a blaze of golden and purple flowers 
and greenest grass, pictures of plenty, images and indicators of 
the farming wealth of England, which nothing can surpass. They 
stand in company, beneath the shade of drooping willows and 
polished alders, in the glittering passage of the brook at noon- 
tide, in groups rich enough to raise a Cuyp or Ruysdael from the 
dust. Devon, or Hereford, Durham, Northumberland, Chester, or 
Gloucester, what country on the face of the earth can shew meadows 
like yours, with cattle like yours ! What has this planet to exhibit 
of fat and milky like yours ; enough to make the jolly heart of the 
English farmer proud, and big, and buttery, as it is ? And what 
would you say, did you see the life of a cow in Germany ? Here, 
for the most brilliant portion of the year, she is shut up in close 
prison. There are no green meadows, no running streams ; no 
roving in sleek, round-bodied, dappled, and lowing herds for her. 
She is cooped up in a little dark stall. Old women and young 
women, and children with creels on their backs, go out with hooks, 
and cut rough grass and rampant weeds from under bushes in the 
woods, along the roadsides, and in the corners of fields, for her. 
Docks, chervil, rough sedge from the river's brink, anything that is 
green and eatable, is piled in baskets on old women's heads, and 
brought home to her. Shut up there, the very smell of aught 
green is enough to make her devour it. In summer, the lower leaves 
of the dick-ruben are stripped off" for her ; lucerne is grown for her, 
and odds and ends of cabbage, carrots, and turnip leaves fall to her 
share. She cannot rove in iields, for there are none. She cannot 
climb the hill-sides, for there climb the vines; and the plains are 



AND THEIR PEOPLE. 25 

full of corn, green crops, and tobacco, without a hedge to keep her 
from picking and stealing. When she comes out, it is to labour. 
With a fellow slave she is seized by the horns; a yoke is clapped 
on the back of her head, one end of which rests on hers, and the 
other on the head of her fellow: this is strapped fast, and secured 
to the pole of the wagon or the plough, and thus with her meek 
forehead fast in the stocks of labour, she is driven a-field, or to 
market, to perform all the work of her peasant-master. It is a 
pitiable sight to see a couple of these mild and gentle animals 
coming along with their heads hung down, and immovable in any 
direction, "for they must move together, if they move at all;" 
while behind comes the driver, whipping and bawling, " wisht ! 
wisht \" or "yisht ! yisht ! oot ! oot ! oot ! woa ! woa ! ah ! uhoo!" 
and such like sounds. While she lives, this is the lot of the 
German cow ! She has not the satisfaction of her milk flowing in 
warm and foamy streams into union with that of a score of her 
fellows, and thence arising piles of rich golden butter, and the 
splendid masses of Stilton or double Gloucester — such glorious 
productions as Stilton, Dunlop, or double Gloucester, never enter 
the region of a German peasant's imagination : on the contrary, 
her isolated stream goes to furnish only a butter, meagre, pallid, 
and poor, or cheeses formed in the palm of the hand, and dried on 
the outside of the window-sill, more like hens' eggs than anything 
beside. When she dies, too, miserable cow ! she has not even the 
satisfaction of dying fat ! 

Yet the poor things do not, after all, look so much amiss. In 
his way, and according to his notions, the German farmer is, no 
doubt, kind to his cattle ; and if he would but give them separate 
yokes, so that they could move their heads, as in a few instances 
is to be seen, they would not so much move our compassion. 

The ploughs and harrows of the peasantry are as primitive as 
their wagons. The harrows are, many of them, entirely of wood, 
teeth and all. A single harrow is drawn by two cows. A boy goes 
before the cows, directly before their heads, and holding the middle 
of the yoke, leads them in the right line, while the man with a 
rope to the back part of the harrow, goes behind, shouting to the 
cows, and every now and then lifting the harrow by the rope, to 
clear the teeth of clods and rubbish. The plough is of the most 



26 



GERMAN VILLAGES 



simple construction. A rounded pole of about two-thirds of the 
length of ours, for the beam; a pair of stilts, made out of a forked 
branch, and set very upright; a wooden mould-board, and a very- 
simple flat share, and a pair of little wheels, on which the plough- 
beam rests in front, and there is the plough of the German farmer ! 
The whole is so simple and so rude, that any farmer brought up in 
a working agricultural school, and taught to handle his tools, could 
construct much better for himself. But these answer the purpose 
of the peasants. They are simple, they are cheap, and they are 
conveyed to and from the field without that lumber and cumber 
with which ploughs and harrows are taken to the field in England. 
There needs no cart to take them; the peasant takes off the little 
frame supporting the two front wheels ; he then lays his plough 
sideways, and fastens the fore-end of the beam on the frame of the 
wheels; he then takes a prop formed of a forked bough thus, 
which he lays over the thick end of the beam near the stilts ; 
and one of the stilts on one side, and the foot of the plough on 
the other, resting on his prop or drag, fixes it firmly. Others, 
instead of this forked bough, have a little frame with a pair of wheels 
to put behind. A sort of carriage is thus formed, and the peasant 
lays his harrow on the top and drives to the field. When there, 
he has only to take off his harrow, remove the prop, turn his plough 
right way up, hook the beam to the little frame of the wheels, and 
go to work. When he has done, he takes his implements away in 
the same manner, with scarcely any trouble at all. This plan of 
conveyance of ploughs and harrows to the field, might also be 
adopted with advantage in England. 







In those parts of Germany where large farms arc common, 
especially in the north, of course both the apparatus, the horses, 
and the workmanship, are superior. Agricultural societies, as in 



AND THEIR PEOPLE. 27 

England, have promoted good tillage; and in many places, as in 
the plains of Brunswick and Weimar, you will see curious cyphers 
and flourishes on the new-ploughed lands, which the ploughmen 
have made with their ploughs, to shew their dexterity. Here, 
with this humble apparatus, the ploughing, of course, is not so 
deep, or so artistical. It would, by English farmers, be reckoned 
often poor scratching, and certainly would not win the prize at a 
ploughing match. Yet the peasant harrows and clears his land 
till it is in the nicest order, and it is admirable to see the crops 
which he obtains. It is true that his green crops are well hoed, 
and laboured. The wheat grain on the Rhine plain is an excep- 
tion. It is thin, and of a very light kind. The ear has commonly 
only two rows of corn, and the finest heads do not weigh more 
than thirty-six grains, chaff and all; each naked corn about one 
grain. This, I imagine, is not more than one-third of the average 
weight of English wheat; and, as the crops are thin, they probably 
do not yield more than one-fourth, if so much, as the English crops. 
The village of Rohrbach presented to our eyes a singular aspect, 
and may be taken as a specimen of a German dorf in general. 
The houses had the same heavy look which the houses of the German 
dorfs commonly have, with plenty of old, tall roofs, and leaning 
gables turned towards the street; and great round-headed gate- 
ways in the farm-houses leading into their yards. The streets, as 
is usual, were long, and paved with huge uneven stones. One side of 
the street was left unpaved for a little brook to run down it, and 
over this bridges of great stones were laid to the houses. Down the 
other side of the street ran another little stream in a gutter, and 
in this the geese were sitting and forming dams with their bodies, 
in which they nibbled, and ducked, and washed themselves. The 
whole long street, from bottom to top, was full of these geese. 
Some of them, in flocks, were flying up and down, and making no 
little clangour. As usual, there were the brunnens spouting out 
their never-ceasing water into their great troughs, and women 
collected with their tubs about them, in full gossip; and the cows, 
released at this the peasant's dinner-time, half-past ten, from their 
yokes and labour, also crowding round the troughs to drink. 
Plenty of funny-looking children, and some other grown-up people 
completed the scene. 



28 



GERMAN VILLAGES 




The children are odd little objects; thick, well fed, and with 
plenty of hair, in German fashion; the little girls, in bodices, 

which seemed ready to 
burst with plumpness, and 
all, however small, with their 
hair in tails. The larger 
having their tails hanging 
down their backs, and the 
smaller, having theirs 
brought from the sides of 
their heads in hanging 
bows to their ears, over 
which they pass. Most of 
them were with out shoesand 
stockings. The boys were 
going in groups, with creels 
on their backs, to the plain 
to collect grass for the cows. 
One picturesque group, 
having amongst them a lad 
with his father's cocked hat 
on, we prevailed upon, by the 
offer of a kreutzer, the third 
of a penny, to stand and be 
sketched. The lads were 
wonderfully delighted at 
the idea of having their pic- 
tures taken, and the grown- 
up people not much less so. 
We had soon the greater 
part of the village out, and 
all very merry watching us, 
as we sat on a tree lying 
in the street. While this 
was going on, a bauei or 
two, passing along, in fun turned the lad's cocked hat hindbefore 
mi his head, 'flic old women, as they passed, had some jibe or 
other with the lads. "So, white head, are 




you having 



\our 



AM) THEIR PEOPLE. 29 

picture taken ? Ah ! you there in the hat, you'll make a grand 
picture shant you?" At length another came, and cried, "haste! 
haste away! after your grass boys!" and each receiving the 
mighty sum of a kreutzer, went off in highest glee, crying to every 
one they came near, "See! see! a kreutzer! a kreutzer!" 

There was a considerable air of poverty, and a greater air 
of slovenliness in this dorf. Their yards, as is usual, were chaoses 
of litter ; heaps of wood for fuel, the little old wagons, ploughs, 
wheelbarrows, and children playing in the dust, besides the endless 
swarm of geese. These geese they cram with Indian corn, and 
that to such an extent that they sometimes all but choke them. 
They also artificially enlarge their livers, which they never eat 
themselves, but sell, as great dainties. Many of these people are 
said to be Jews — agricultural Jews — of all anomalies, according to 
our notions, the greatest; and their villages are said to be always 
distinguished by an extraordinary degree of dirt and slovenliness. 
Still, many of their houses, in their front windows, have flowers, 
particularly balsams and carnations, of the latter especially the 
pale yellow ones, so very rare in England. Some of these were 
very fine. From the upper windows, as a general and regular 
summer exhibition, hung out beds and mattresses of a gay red 
stripe, and bedside carpets to air. Here and there might be seen 
a smarter new house, in the peculiar style of this country; and 
thus you have a pretty good notion of one of the country villages 
of Germany. 

The church had a more old and neglected air than the one we 
noticed in the other village, and in the churchyard scarcely a stone 
to mark a single grave. Slight wooden crosses of mere lath, about 
two feet high, stained of a red colour and dotted with black spots, 
were planted on a few new-made graves, and round them were 
lying the remains of garlands of box and ivy, intended, no doubt, 
as emblems of immortal greenness and unfading freshness; but all 
their greenness and freshness were gone. The graves themselves 
were heaps of dust, and a little time would remove any vestige 
from them of those slight memorials which these rustic people give 
to their departed friends. 

As we returned we saw large groups of peasants dining under 
the trees in the fields. Women were bringing from Heidelberg 



30 GERMAN VILLAGES. 

large baskets on their heads containing provisions. The dinners 
seemed principally contained in two large pans or dishes; one of 
soup, and one of small puddings called noodles, floating in sauce, 
or something of a pudding kind in a fluid state. Some of these 
puddings were little balls of flour and potatoes, dotted with little 
lumps of fried black bread, and which to a too fanciful eye looked 
like raisins. 

The people lay or sat, men and women, round the large dishes, 
all eating together out of them with long spoons. They formed 
picturesque groups. The men stripped; the women, many of them, 
in bodices of red-striped linen, of which the Germans make their 
bed-ticks, and which look very lively. Many of the girls too, 
bronzed with the sun, looked all health and solidity. About stood 
boots, which the men had pulled off to cool their feet as they lay 
at rest, baskets, and stone bottles. Two boys were dining under a 
tree on brown bread and little pears, which they drew from a bag, 
and seemed to divide very carefully between them. These boys had 
nothing to drink, and said they were accustomed to have nothing 
to drink to their field dinners, not even water. The homeliness of 
the fare of these peasants would no little astonish the stomachs of 
our bean-and-bacon devourers of our harvest-time in England. 



'111 




<• s -z^m-d 






(gtO^IPTIK d o Q D 



PEOPLE IN THE WOODS AND VALLEYS. 



We have now led our readers into the first acquaintance with Ger- 
man external life and scenery, up the gi'eat western river, through 
its plains, its dorfs of the plain, and into the towns ; we will now 
make one more excursion amongst the woods and valleys, where 
the other great features of its country and country-life lie, and 
then dismiss our first impressions for a more intimate acquaintance 
with the land and its people, in all their various conditions and 
relationships. 

It would shock the religious of England to see how, on a Sun- 
day, the Germans of all classes are flocking off into the country, 
as on all other leisure occasions, in the summer. To see, early on 
Sunday mornings, families of sobriety and of high standing, and 



32 PEOPLE IN THE WOODS 

even those of grave professors, setting forth for a long day's 
excursion. Ey seven o'clock you will see them going out, having 
not the least idea that to resort to some distant village amongst 
the hills, perhaps to go to church there, perhaps not, but at all 
events to proceed to some rural inn, and there, or in the woods, 
spend the day in social enjoyment, has anything at all amiss in it. 
Nothing is more common; and on these, and on all such occasions, 
they will do what would never be thought of in England. They 
will take tea and sugar, and if necessary, fine bread; and eating and 
drinking of their own, will pay the good-natured landlord for his 
attendance and the use of his house. 

Being invited to join such a party, after attendance of Divine 
service at nine o'clock, we steered away with them up into the 
hills. It was the 2d of August, and splendid weather. From the 
top of the Kaiser-Stuhl above the town, a tower already mentioned, 
at an elevation of 1800 feet above the sea, we enjoyed a most 
glorious prospect. It included a circle of seventy miles or more in 
diameter, with the forest hills of the Odenwald in one direction, 
and the great Rhine-plain in another; bounded by the hills of 
Baden-Baden, and the Vogesen mountains in France. The towns 
and villages within it, it would be difficult to enumerate, but they 
were in scores, including Mannheim, Speir, Worms, etc., amongst 
the largest; the Rhine shining in its mazy windings here and there, 
through a vast extent of plains. 

At the foot of this tower we made a lunch of fruit and bread, 
with a bottle of beer, and sugar-water, procured from the old man 
who attends at the tower with a spy-glass, and who had erected a sort 
of Robinson Crusoe shed, with moss walls, and mossed seats under 
the trees; and then steered our way through the summer woods, 
towards the village of Guiberg, and through Bommerthal to 
Neckergemund. The ramble through the forests was one of the 
most delightful things that we ever enjoyed. The weather was so 
sunny and beautiful, yet breezy enough to prevent its becoming 
oppressive, but, on the contrary, to diffuse through the solemn woods 
a feeling of life and of poetry. There was a sense too of being 
in a new countrj and amongst a new people, that gave its charm 
and us novelty. Green tracks of turf, as we advanced through 
the forest, went branching off right and left, presenting lovely, 



AND VALLEYS. 33 

embowered vistas; and here and there the woods expanded into 
sylvan regions of much taller and mightier trees than are seen on the 
hill-sides., and threw the most profound silence and solemn gloom. 
Then again, we came out into open tracks, where the sun showered 
down his full splendour ; where deep wild grass and new flowers, 
and bees and gaudy butterflies, and grashoppers and grilli, sing- 
ing their husky summer songs, and lizards basking on the hot 
banks, and dragon -flies, blue and green, darting with their long- 
filmy wings here and there, filled up the feeliug of summer 
and woodland life to the heart's brim. There were young people, 
all happiness and gay chatter, rambling along ; and those of riper 
years not a whit less happy; and children running in eager speed 
after every new object of nature's wonders; and who shall not say, 
that it was one of those scenes and days that must long linger all 
sun-bright in the memory? At one moment we plunged again 
into close and steep-descending wood-tracks, where the green 
boughs had to be bent down to make way; at another, on an open 
height, were hills and valleys around us — the hills all covered with 
woods, the valleys and intervening plains with corn. 

As we approached Guiberg, we saw it standing amid its corn- 
plots, its garden-plots all unfenced, its green sloping fields, and its 
scattered fruit trees, having a very sweet but very German look. 
When we entered the village itself, of course it was like all German 
villages — the same scene of heavy houses, most of them having 
their lower story occupied by their cows; of heaps of wood, ploughs 
and wagons; but around it lay delightful old bowery orchards, 
and in one of these belonging to the Wirthshouse, or inn, we dined. 
With a bottle of the country wine, some roast beef, and plenty of 
cherries, for which this village is famous far and wide, we made as 
merry as if we had been dining with Joe Miller himself. The 
children from the neighbouring orchards came about to look on, 
to whom we gave bread and meat, which they were at first too shy 
to take, but when we turned our backs it vanished with a wonder- 
ful velocity. Two boys were set by a gentleman of the party to 
see which could soonest devour a piece of black bread for three 
kreutzers — one penny — which they did to their own danger of 
choking, and great merriment of the spectators. Others were set 
to hop for a kreutzer, and watching this, and a set of bauers playing 

D 



34 PEOPLE IN THE WOODS 

at nine-pins, the time soon fled by. We went on, and took tea at 
Bommerthal, where the hostess, a village belle who had probably 
never seen tea before, for the party took it with them, boiled it in 
a dirty pan, and made an awful and untouchable mess of it. The 
bauers were in the public-houses in this village, singing and drink- 
ing in a manner that would have horrified Sir Andrew Agnew, and 
made us think that for a serious and sentimental nation, the Ger- 
mans had the least show of being a religious one imaginable. 

We proceeded in a fine calm and shining evening to the last 
village before our return, Neckergem'und, down a green valley, at 
the feet of steep old beech-woods, and past old water-mills of a 
primitive character. The whole country in itself was charming, 
but was like a country in a dream, — a country without animals. 
There were neither cow, horse, sheep, swine, hare, pheasant, par- 
tridge, or scarcely any bird to be seen. In such a country in 
England we should have seen flocks and herds; and, towards 
evening, the hares and pheasants would have been seen feeding on 
the outskirts of the woods in scores, and we should have heard the 
partridges calling each other together for the night. Here was 
nothing, even of a winged nature, except a few small birds and one 
solitary crow. 

In this country you never see the large flocks of rooks sailing 
homeward in the evening, full, and uttering their satisfaction in a 
quiet caw, now and then, as their dusky legions pass over your 
head. You do not see them as with vis, spreading themselves at 
noon on the meadows and hill-sides, or hear their clammering at 
morning, and all spring in the lofty trees about the country halls. 
When the German prince, Piickler Muscau, was in England, nothing 
surprised him more than the rookeries, and he could not com- 
prehend what music our country gentlemen could find in notes so 
hoarse, nor what charms in the society of such flocks of black and 
sonorous birds. He knew not, in fact, how many pleasant associa- 
tions arc connected with rooks in England. 

Who that has been brought up in the country has not becu 
accustomed from his infancy to hear the cawing of the rookery; to 
witness the active labour and cares, and schemes of these birds in 
spring? lias not stood by his father, or other old friend, while 
the young have been fetched down from the lofty elm by the cross- 



AND VALLEYS. OO 

bow? Has not run to fetch it as it fell? Has not clambered into 
the green tree in which it has, perhaps, lodged in falling, and hooked 
it down? Has not helped the keeper to carry to the house the 
black feathery bunch of young rooks, thus shot, for the cook to 
convert into the most savoury of country pies; or to be dispatched 
in different directions as presents to friends? Who has not, in 
bright summer days, when the young have got abroad, seen them in 
almost every green oak, or on the turf of every green meadow, when 
the country was all flowers and sweetness, with fluttering wings 
demanding food from their busy parents? And. in the still, broad, 
quiet sunshine of summer evenings, as he has sate in garden 
arbour or at open window, with the dear old friends of his youth, 
has not often seen them come soberly homewards from their day's 
wanderings, in a rustling and jetty array, from whose wings the 
light of the setting sun glanced, seeking those ancient and towering 
trees which had overshadowed the hall for ages? Who, in the days 
of warm feeling and expanding affections, when life was a long 
summer of happiness and gaiety; when, perhaps, the attachment 
of a life was growing, as he has ridden home in the sweet dusk of 
a June midnight, has not heard them in their lofty rest, half roused 
by the horse's tread, give a rustle, a caw, and then all quiet again? 
Or w 7 hen he has looked out in the profound quiet of such a mid- 
night from his chamber window, and felt, as it were, the unseen 
odours of mingled flowers floating up to him from the garden 
below, from beds made beautiful by the fair hands of sisters — then 
more beautiful than their flowers; and now, perhaps, dead, or dis- 
persed into wide countries, or pulled down, and all their loveliness 
gone, like a dream of such a night, with heartless husbands and 
luckless children, — and has not heard from the tree-top some faint 
mutter, some drowsy cry, as if the side-by-side nestled rooks were 
talking in their sleep, or were complaining of being crowded by 
some heavy old fellow on their bough — sounds which provoked 
laughter at the moment, but are preserved in the memory for long 
years? In short, what Englishman recalls the dear old home of 
his birth and his youth, with all its affections and delights, and 
transactions; who recalls its garden nooks, its beehives by the 
sunny wall, its fields, its woods, its friends, its favourite animals, 
its sorrows and its merriments, its gay meetings and its partings, to 

n 2 



OD PEOPLE IN THE WOODS 

meet there no more, every thing which makes that spot what no 
other spot on earth besides ever can be by any magic, even the 
most powerful magic of love, and does not find the English rook a 
part of his retrospect, uttering his joyous rough John-Bullish caV, 
or his laughable midnight muttering, insignificant as he is in him- 
self, an indispensable dweller in the paradise of the past? Xay, 
the very blue air of a summer's afternoon does not seem right to 
me without the hisjh-soarins:, solemn wins' of the rook: the fairest 
landscape is not complete without the rook; the flowery, deep, 
grassy full fields of most glad spring would be melancholy without 
the rook. The rook, with all his attendants of pert jackdaws and 
circling starlings, who love his sedate and judge-like company, is 
dearer to an Englishman than he is aware of. But in Germany, 
the rook, the grave, the sober, the knowing and social rook, is so 
little known that he has no other name than " Kr'ahe mit deni 
weissen Schuabel," — the crow with the white bill. He is neither 
loved, known, nor wanted there, for he would grub up the spring- 
ing corn in quest of his prey, and would find none of the grand 
old pastoral meadows he finds in England to supply his demand 
for slugs and worms. 

But let us quit our rook, and the solitary landscape, where 
neither he nor his feathery compeers greet us, and dropping down 
the IS'eckar from Neckergemund, enter a valley on the other side, 
which shall give us another peep into German country life. This 
is Petersthal, or the Valley of Peter, and is one of those innumerable 
valleys in Germany lying amongst the hills, which swarm with 
liuman life, and present one of the most picturesque lively scenes 
of German industry; — industry still in the midst of quiet, and 
surrounded by the slumber of mighty woods. It is a long and 
winding valley, having very little breadth in the bottom, and yet 
enough for a clear stream to bound along, aud hollow water- 
meadows of the richest green to slope down on each side, and 
numbers of ancient-looking water-mills to be seated upon it; and 
cottages to be scattered in one continual string for miles all along 
the foot of the hills on both sides. These mills are largish build- 

_> in the tine heavy style, with large farm-yards attached; plenty 
of heaps and great piles of fire-wood; old mill-stones and old 

_ his lying or standing about. The millers are generally the 



AXU VALLEYS. .37 

most substantial men of the place. They, some of them, manufac- 
ture flour, and some oil from the rape and linseed, the poppy-head, 
and walnuts of the country; and the bumping sound of their 
stampers — beams moved by the machinery perpendicularly, and by 
the cogs of the wheels raised, and let fall on the seeds placed in 
flannel bags in a proper receptacle below, is one of the most cha- 
racteristic sounds of these valleys. Often at a distance when buried 
in the woods, you can find the direction of a village by the sleepy 
sound of these bumpers. These mills, and the cottages, stand amid 
a world of old fruit trees, which, in autumn, are so loaded that 
they are obliged to be propped and tied up. In all directions, on the 
hill sides, extend their cultivated fields, full of their crops of corn, 
and vegetables of various kinds; their little vineyards often shew 
their trelliced plots, and all above extends the thick and shady 
region of forest. 

Everywhere in these valleys you see the people busy in their 
possessions. Men and women and children are at work in the 
fields. Down the hills come women and children from the woods, 
carrying on their heads loads of fuel, or dragging great bundles of 
boughs down the narrow hollow ways after them. Others are 
cutting grass for the pent-up cattle; — women are mowing much 
oftener than the men. Below are groups of women, with bare legs, 
washing by the clear stream. Quantities of linen are spread out 
to dry and to bleach ; and round the houses are stalking plenty of 
fowls, while a large dog barks at you from his kennel as you pass 
the mill, or little poodles, with cock-a-side tails, bark at you from 
the cottages, and geese clap their wings and clangour in the brook. 

This Petersthal is a great place for bleaching and washing, and 
all along lay the white patches of linen on the green meadow grass, 
and groups of the stoutest and most healthy-looking girls stood 
washing by the doors as we passed; while numbers of children ran 
about, many of them with nothing more than a shirt on. Here 
was one holding two cows by a rope tied to the horns, to graze by 
the wayside, and here another holding a goat. It was harvest 
time, and hot weather. The women were cutting their harvest, the 
men being gone to the greater harvest of the plain. 

The Catholic character of the valley was obvious by the little 
images of the Virgin in niches in the front of the cottages as we 



38 PEOPLE IN THE WOODS 

passed. These images are of the most wretched kind; little things 
of gaudily-coloured plaster, bought of the wandering Italian dealers. 
But at the head of the glen stood a little chapel, which is a perfect 
specimen of what you find so commonly in Catholic districts, at 
once indicating so much devotion and so much poverty. This 
little chapel had a very simple and ancient appearance, standing at 
the head of that retired glen, and surrounded by the solemn woods. 
The altar was painted in gaudy colours of red and yellow, with its 
front panels papered with wall-paper. On it stood two pyramids 
or obelisks painted black, covered with white death's heads, decreas- 
ing in size upwards to the top of the obelisks. Above were little 
images of cherubs' heads; and one side of the crypt, where the pix 
is kept, was a saint, looking as if he had fainted, and on the other 
a Virgin looking round at the saint in great curiosity. The censer 
and cups were of the commonest metal; pewter, iron, or brass. The 
walls were covered with the most paltry pictures. On one side of 
the altar hung one intended to represent a Madonna, on the other 
that of St. Wenceslaus, the patron of cattle, standing on a cloud in 
the middle of a field, and peasants and peasantesses kneeling and 
praying to him; while below ran, in all directions, cattle, horses, 
sheep, and swine, as if filled with extraordinary rejoicing at the 
presence of the saint. The frames of these pictures were hung 
with garlands of leaves. 

Behind the altar was a little sanctum; a scene of dirt and 
poverty. In a sort of cupboard lay the remains of leaden images 
of saints and cherubs, in a chaos of decrepitude, — some without an 
arm, and some without a leg. There was material for making the 
incense in miserable pots and boxes, leathers and dusters, giving a 
most deplorable idea of the means for the preparation of those 
ceremonies in which the church so much delights, and in which the 
people believe so much efficacy to exist. A more woful exposure of 
the nakedness of the land, and unweaving of the enchantments of 
the mass, could not be. There was also the little confessional chair, 
with its lattice; the priest's robes of the plainest and commonest 
stuff, with a coloured print or two of the most ordinary character; 
a book of the Catholic faith, and a registry of the marriages, births, 
christenings, and so on, of the people of the valley. 

The little girl who attended us, was astonished at our walking 



AND VALLEYS. 



39 



into this place. She entreated us to come out, as she was very 
much frightened at our going in there, it was so holy. She quite 
trembled with terrors and anxiety. The seats, and pulpit, and 
gallery were all of the most primitive construction. The front of 
the gallery had once been painted, but there now remained only 
the faintest traces of its adornment; and in its centre, over the 
door, stood an organ with tin pipes, most of which were broken or 
deranged. A lady of the party went up and tried to elicit a sound, 
but in vain. The little girl said it used to play, but a man came to 
put it in order, and it had never played since. In short everything 
spoke of the poverty of the congregation, or the neglect of the 
church in a populous valley, where nearly all the inhabitants were 
Catholics. In the churchyard there was not a single stone of 
remembrance. Nothing but such crosses of lath as were lately 
mentioned, on which garlands of cut paper hung, or were laid on 
the graves. These garlands were made like those which used to be 
hung in our village churches at the funeral of a young maiden. 
Flowers were also, as usual, planted on the graves; and on these 
little lath crosses, were nailed leaves torn out of their books of 
devotion, having rudely-coloured pictures of the Virgin, or some 
favourite saint or other. 





©HAPTIR flV, 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



In describing the out-of-door life of Germany, we must again 
begin with the peasantry, because it is their out-of-door life which 
is continually around us, and presses upon our attention in all 
forms and in all directions. We shall then proceed to that of the 
higher classes, which consists of their amusements rather than 
their business. 

In Germany the peasants are the great and ever-present objects 
of country life. They are the great population of the country. 
because they themselves are the possessors. This country is, in 
fact, for the most part, in the hands of the people. It is par- 
celled out amongst the multitude; and wherever you go, instead 
of the great halls, the vast parks, and the broad lands of the 
nobility and gentry, as in England, you see the perpetual evidences 
of an agrarian system. The exceptions to this, which 1 shall 
afterwards poinl out, are the exceptions, they art' nut the rule. 
The peasants arc not, as with us, for the most part totally cut 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 41 

off from property in the soil they cultivate, totally dependent on 
the labour afforded by others, — they are themselves the proprietors. 
It is perhaps from this cause that they are probably the most 
industrious peasantry in the world. They labour busily, early and 
late, because they feel that they are labouring for themselves. The 
women and children all work as well as the men, for it is family 
work; nay, the women often work the hardest. They reap, thrash, 
mow, work on the fallows, do anything. In summer, without 
shoes and stockings, clad in a dark blue petticoat and body of 
the same, or in other colours, according to the costume of the 
neighbourhood, and with their white chemise sleeves in contrast 
with their dress, and with their hair burnt of a singed brown, or 
into different hues, with the sun, they are all out in the hot fields. 
Nay, you may even see women driving a wagon, in which two 
or three men are sitting at ease smoking. They take the dinners 
to the fields, frequently giving to the lesser children a piece of 
bread, and locking them up in the cottage till they come home again, 
the older ones being at the school till they join them in the afternoon. 

This would be thought a hard life in England; but hard as it 
is, is not to be compared with the condition of labourers in some 
agricultural parts of a dear country like England, where eight or 
nine shillings a week, and no cow, no pig, no fruit for the market, 
no work in the winter, but dependence for everything on a master, 
a constant feeling of anxiety, and the desperate prospect of ending 
his days in a Union workhouse, is too commonly the labourer's lot. 
The German peasants work hard, but they have no actual want. 
Every man has his house, his orchard, his road-side trees, as we 
have seen, commonly so hung with fruit that he is obliged to prop 
and secure them all ways, or they would be torn to pieces. He 
has his corn-plot, his plot for mangel-wurzel, for hemp, and so on. 
He is his own master; and he, and every member of his family, 
have the strongest motives to labour. You see the effect of this 
in that unremitting diligence which is beyond that of the whole 
world besides, and his economy, which is still greater. 

The Germans indeed are not so active and lively as the English. 
You never see them in a bustle, or as though they meant to knock 
off a vast deal in a little time. You never witness that scene of 
stir and hurry that you often do in England; that shouting to one 



42 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

another and running, where the need of dispatch rouses all the life 
and energy of the English character. They are, on the contrary, 
slow but for ever doing. They plod on from day to day, and year 
to year — the most patient, untirable, and persevering of animals. 
The English peasant is so cut off from the idea of property, that 
he comes habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is 
warned by the laws of the large proprietors, and becomes, in con- 
sequence, spiritless, purposeless, and at once the terror and the 
victim of the capitalists. The German bauer, on the contrary, 
looks on the country as made for him and his fellow men. He 
feels himself a man ; he has a stake in his country, as good as that 
of the bulk of his neighbours ; he is content with his black bread, 
because his labour has at once created it and sweetened it to his 
taste, and because no proud man can threaten him with ejection or 
the workhouse, so long as he is active and economical. He walks 
therefore with a bold step ; he looks you in the face with the air of 
a free man, but of a respectful one ; and he knows that when he 
dies, he shall not be buried between the vile boards of a pauper's 
coffin, threatening to fall asunder before they reach the grave, nor 
be consigned to the knife of the surgeon; but his children will lay 
him by his fathers, and plant the rose, the carnation, and the cross 
on his grave — Zum Andenken des frommen Vaters — to the memory 
of the good father — and will live the same active and independent 
life, on his native soil, or seek it in America or Australia. 

Hence his continual activity and content. He has no ambition 
to be other than he is ; he wears the costume which his fathers 
wore ; the long coat, and cocked or hollow-sided hat, the bauer's 
costume, and he turns everything about him to apcount. 

We have already seen how perseveringly the women and chil- 
dren gather grass and weeds everywhere for the cows. Nothing 
that can possibly be made use of is lost. The children may be 
seen standing in the stream in the villages carefully washing weeds 
before they are given to the cattle. As we inert them and the 
women with large bundles of grass on their heads tied in large cloths, 
one cannot but call to mind the immense quantities by our highway 
sides, ami ureal green lanes in England, and by wood-sides, which 
grow and wither, which might support many a poor man's eow. 
Hut with the German peasant it is not merelj grass, it is every 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 43 

thing which is collected and appropriated. The cuttings of his 
vines are dried and trussed for winter fodder. The very tops and 
refuse of his hemp are saved for the bedding- of his cattle; nay, 
the rough stalks of his poppies, after the heads are gathered, serve 
the same purpose, and are all converted into manure. When these 
are not sufficient, the children gather moss in the woods ; and in 
summer you constantly meet them coming down out of the hills 
with their great bundles of it. In autumn they gather the very 
fungi out of the woods to sell for poisoning flies, and the stalks of 
a tall species of grass to sell for cleaning out their long pipes. 
Nothing is lost; the leaves in the woods are raked up as they fall, 
and are brought home before winter for bedding for cattle. The 
fir-cones, which with us lie all scattered in the forest, are as care- 
fully collected to light their fires, or are carried in sacks and sold 
in the cities for that purpose. The slop from their yards and 
stables is all preserved, and carried to the fields in water-carts to 
irrigate their crops. The economy and care of the German peasant 
afford a striking lesson of utility to all Europe. Time is as care- 
fully economised as everything else. The peasants are early risers, 
and thus obtain hours of the day's beauty and freshness which 
others lose. As they herd their cattle and swine, or as they meet 
to chat, the everlasting knitting-needles are at work, and the 
quantities of stockings which they accumulate are astonishing. 

These are things which for the benefit of our beloved country, 
and the advantage of our labouring fellow-men, one would wish to 
see more introduced into our own land. One would wish to see 
the English peasant have more individual property, however small, 
to excite a spirit of activity and economy as well as of self- 
dependence. This want has been felt by many gentlemen, and the 
allotment system introduced with excellent effect. The farther this 
can be carried, the more shall we see a return to the contented spirit 
of past days. On the other hand no state is perfect, and while we 
are in one extreme the Germans are in another. The perpetual 
subdivision of property amongst children has, in many parts, 
brought so much poverty on all, that it has been found necessary 
to check the effect of this by making the land, in some states, 
descend to the eldest son, in others to the youngest, by a law of 
what is called the Majorat or the Minorat, of majority or minority. 



44 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

The general possession of the soil by the peasantry has, more- 
over, driven the higher and more refined classes almost entirely 
into the towns ; and thus that beautiful mixture of society which 
prevails in the country in England, is here altogether lost. Those 
varied houses and estates which embellish the whole landscape in 
England are here unknown. That wealth and taste and intelligence 
which the residence of all classes in the country diffuse over the 
whole of rural life, are here withdrawn, and the peasantry are left 
to their unmixed native rudeness and ignorance. They all are 
educated to a certain extent it is true, and to what extent we shall 
hereafter shew; but all example and stimulus, which spring from a 
more educated and refined class, are removed from the observation 
of the vast country population. They must for ever remain pretty 
much what they are, in every sense, — plodding labourers. As 
such, we will now see how they employ themselves through the 
circling year. 

There is not an hour of that year in which they do not find 
unceasing occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather 
permits them by any means to get out of doors, they are always 
"finding something to do. Of their in-door employments we shall 
speak elsewhere. They carry out their manure to their lands while 
the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy cleaning 
r ditches, and felling old fruit-trees, or such as do not bear well. 
Such of them as are too poor to lay in a sufficient stock of wood, 
find plenty of work in ascending into the mountainous woods, 
and bringing thence fuel. It would astonish the English common 
people to see the intense labour with which the Germans earn their 
firewood. In the depth of frost and snow, go into any of their 
hills and woods, and there you find them hacking up stumps, 
cutting off branches, and gathering, by all means which the official 
wood police will allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of wood, which 
they convey home with the most incredible toil and patience. The 
women and children carry on their heads, or drag after them, or 
wheel in barrows, or trail on sledges, great bundles of these sticks 
down the most steep and stony hollow tracks in the hills. It is 
One of the characteristics of German scenery, to see all these roads 
and steep foot-paths out of these hilly woods harrowed with the 
scratching of these perpetually descending bundles. The married 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



45 



women and the smart country damsels of England would stand 
aghast at meeting such objects of slavery, as they would call it, as 
we meet here continually — women, old and young, dragging and 
toiling under these bundles in the severity of winter or the intense 
heat of summer — and would bless their coal-pits, with all their 
black diamonds, though they sometimes buy them " plaguey dear."* 



i 




The English of the working class can indeed form no conception 
of the hardy, unceasing, out-of-door labour of Continental women 
the year round. How would married women with large families 
complain, and how would young ones blush, to be seen sweltering 
in these labours, more like ponies and patient asses than accord-" 
ing to our notions of women and their work; and would ask how, 
if they were to do all this, they were to have their cottage hearths 
so neat, and their husbands' and children's clothes in nice order ? 
But then they would not have them so. It is in England only that' 
the cottages of the peasantry are so clean, so neat, so sweet, so 
picturesque, and even poetical. It is impossible that the German 
women, old and young, can at once be out of doors and at home; 
at once working all sunburnt and dusty in the fields and woods, 
and in their houses washing, scouring, mending, and making all 
domestic and attractive. In fact there is nothing which so at once 
extinguishes all the poetical preconceptions which you may have' 
imbibed from German Mdrchen and popular literature of the peasant 

* Recent Parliamentary inquiries, however, have shewn that in these very coal- 
pits we have scenes of worse slavery than the woodlands of Germany, or than any 
scenes of any country of Europe can parallel. British humanity must surely 
speedily determine that this shall no longer be. 



46 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

life as going into any of their houses. What a contrast to those 
sweet little peasant-nests which are scattered all over England, 
thick as flowers in a summer field ! Those little huts, which, 
however poor they may be in themselves, stand in summer in their 
lovely little gardens, and are clothed to the thatch with roses and 
vines, and have their flower-beds sending their odours into them 
with the sound of bees, and within are as clean and bright as nice 
hands can make them; and have in winter a cheering fire blazing 
in the chimney, and the mother, neat as the house itself, sitting at 
her sewing, or making wholesome household bread that a prince 
might eat and thank God for it; and with its little chambers and 
clean linen all so fresh, that it fills the mind of the beholder with a 
spirit of cheerfulness. 

Many sad inroads, indeed, have the pressure and poverty of 
late years made into these rural paradises in some parts of England; 
but yet, even as they now are, what a contrast are they to the 
houses of the German bauers ! These houses are generally their 
own. They are strongly built; for the most part, of stone, and it 
is probable that they have less real anxiety in them than those of 
the English ; but, in all else which makes our humble homes 
attractive, what a contrast ! Outwardly, there is little of the pic- 
turesque or of neatness about them, except their orchards and vine- 
yards ; inwardly, how dingy, and dirty, and cheerless ! In winter, 
instead of the blazing fire casting its pleasant glow on all the walls, 
a black iron stove in a corner seems to make the gloomy place 
gloomier. There are troops of children, none of the cleanest, often 
seeming to have their large heads set on as large bodies, with very 
little neck, and with very unkempt hair; and the smells which 
proceed from one thing or another are inexpressible, and often 
almost stifling. This want of cleanliness and neatness, and these 
repulsive smells, meet you in all the houses of the common people. 
In country inns, where the English have not been accustomed to 
go, you find it a most difficult matter to harden yourselves to the 
endurance of passing a night. In the houses of the burgher class u 
is too often the same. A sense of want of cleanness, a feeling of 
grit ami dust under your feet on the naked floor, fill you with 
disgust to everything; but bow the pungent ami peculiar smells of 
common German bouses are compounded it would be difficult to 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 47 

say. Even in good houses in cities, where suites of rooms are let, 
especially where there are shops below them, you have such over- 
powering odours as make them intolerable. With this nuisance, 
no doubt, sour-krout, sour paste — with which, spite of the supe- 
riority of yeast, they still persist to leaven their bread, and which 
therefore stands long fermenting in their kneading-tubs — a sort of 
sour curds, and soft cheeses, with which you see the children's 
faces often smeared from eyes to chin; their tobacco, their oils 
and vinegar in their perpetual salads, have pretty close connexion. 
Into such houses as I have had occasion to enter, as into country 
inns, bauers' houses, and those of tradesmen, many of them carrying 
on much business, I have seldom or never been surprised by an air 
of neatness and cleanliness, but have often been so nearly stifled as 
to be obliged to make a speedy retreat. One cannot conceive how 
these people can live in it; but custom has made them entirely 
unconscious of all this, and probably these ' f aromatic gales" and 
rich atmospheres may even to them have become charming. Let 
us step again into the fresh air. 

We left the women and children on the steep roads from the 
hills trailing their loads from the woods; the men, too, on larger 
sledges, will bring down larger loads, tugging, toiling, and moiling 
in a most extraordinary manner. They have then plenty of work 
to chop this up and dry it, and to look after their cattle. The 
moment, too, that the weather relaxes its severity, they are abroad. 
In all their vineyards, the steep hills of the Ehine, the Neckar, 
the Main, the Elbe, the Danube, and in a thousand other valleys 
all over Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia, in February, and while 
the frost yet lasts, they are swarming, cutting their vines — which 
they do very close — 'removing all the side-shoots, and leaving only 
the one main stem, of which they also shorten the last year's shoot 
to three or four joints. They lay the vine-cuttings in little bundles 
to dry; or if the weather be not yet warm or dry enough for that, 
carry them at once home and dry them for fuel, except such as 
they plant for young vines. They are busy, too, everywhere 
pruning their fruit trees and the trees which are planted along 
their public walks, markets, and squares. The moment the frost 
gets out of the earth, they are as busy carrying up manure into 
the hills, and digging it in below the vine-rows. There is nothing 



48 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

so extraordinary as their endurance and indomitable patience in 
this work. The summer tourists who sail up the Rhine, or other 
rivers, may admire the beautiful neatness of the vineyards, but 
they probably think little, and if they do, nan form little conception 
of the enormous labour by which such neatness and fruitfulness 
are obtained. 

They see miles and hundreds of miles of vineyards hanging on 
the steepest mountain sides, supported by walls and terraces of 
stone. Here and there the stones have been gathered from the 
surface, for, at first, these terraces must have been rather wilder- 
nesses of bare stone than anything else; and they see them thrown 
in long ridges, almost mountains of themselves, between the differ- 
ent rows of vineyards, and descending the slopes in long piled 
heaps. They see, in other places, where soil has been carried up 
to the very pinnacles of the rocks, and laid in stony hollows and 
on hanging declivities, where it seems to stick by miracle, and these 
vines planted in it, and laughing as it were in triumph over the 
frowning cliffs below. They see over all these heights, terraces, and 
slopes, and again over vast breadths of receding hill-sides, the vines 
all growing, green and full of fruit; and if it be not the most pic- 
turesque, it is certainly one of the sweetest sights in the world. 
There are no vineyards in Germany so thoroughly neat as those of 
the Rhine country and its neighbourhood. In most places the 
vines, which are about a yard high, are each tied to its separate 
stake; but, in the Rhine lands, these stakes, which are of neat 
split wood, are driven down all over the waste plots in equal lines, 
about a yard each way from each other. Along their tops are 
then bound with withes, rods of wood, first along the lines length- 
ways, and then others crossways, so that they form a firm and 
square framework of two or three yards wide, and of the length of 
the plot, to which the vines are all bound with little straw bind- 
ings. The whole is most compact and neat. It defies the gusty 
winds, and holds the fruit out of the dust, and earth that is 
splashed up iu heavy rains. Between these beds of a few yards 
wide the vine-dressers can approach; and when, as usual, the 
spectator sees, above these green ami exquisitely neat vine-plots, 

scattered fruit trees of various kinds rear themselves, thi' whole 
scene is most delightful. 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



49 



But then, let the observer reflect on the labour which accom- 
plished and which maintains all this. All these stone walls have 
not only been built up with great pains, but every year the frosts 
and torrents of water undermine and throw many of them down. 
When these frosts are over, everywhere you see these quiet and 
undisturbed men clearing away the rubbish, building up again the 
walls, and carrying up again on their backs in tubs called butte, 
the earth which has been washed down. In February and March, 
men, women, and children, are thus everywhere on the alert. They 
remove all the decayed posts and rails of their espaliers; put down 
new ones, and make all fast and tight again. And then to see 
eight or ten of them in a row, each 
with a heavy butte of manure or 
earth on his back, ascending slowly 
to the very tops of these hills, often 
up little ascents of steps for the 
purpose, which reach from the 
valley to the very summit, — they 
look like so many great beetles, 
and are, in fact, the most striking 
examples of invincible, plodding- 
perseverance in the world. 

Then they are as busy digging 
or harrowing whole fields on these 
heights for corn, and even dragg- 
ing the harrow themselves where 
horses could not get, or could 
not readily work, till the whole 

They are 



is as neat as a garden 

turning the streams of water which 

come out of the forest heights 



above, through their little strips 
of intervening meadows. They 
are digging, or rather hoeing with 
their great hoes between the vine 
rows, and delving in the manure; 
and of this the women and chil- 
dren do much. It is amazing in what a little time, by these means, 

e 




50 OUT-OF-DOOR-LIFE. 

they will turn the face of a whole country over. If you descend 
the Rhine early in April in a regular year, you will see all these 
labours completed, and the vineyards awaiting in order the progress 
of the season. But while these labours are going on, it is quite 
animating on a spring day to see the mountain sides all alive, and 
to hear cheerful voices sounding from place to place. 

On the plains, too, they are equally busy in ploughing and 
sowing; in digging circular pits amongst the roots of their hops 
for the poles, piling soil over the roots themselves, and setting 
down the poles which have stood on the ground all winter, reared 
in conical piles. In fact, from this time till that of harvest, the 
peasants, by their peculiar system of agriculture, of such various 
crops, of water-meadows, and stall-feeding, are kept as busy as 
bees. In England, with its great quantity of grass lands and its 
large farms, so soon as the grain is in, and the fields are shut up 
for hay grass, the country seems in a comparative state of rest and 
quiet. But here they are everywhere, and for ever, hoeing and 
mowing, planting and cutting, weeding and gathering. They have 
a succession of crops like a market-gardener. They have their 
carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, saintfoin, lucerne, rape, colewort, cab- 
bage, rotabaga, black turnips, Swedish and white turnips, teazles, 
Jerusalem artichokes, mangel-wurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, 
field beans and peas, vetches, Indian corn, buck-wheat,* madder 
for the manufacturer, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet — 
all, or the greater part, under the family management in their own 
family allotments. They have had these things first to sow, many 
of them to transplant; to hoe, to weed, to clear off insects, to top; 
many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. They have 
their water-meadows, of which kind almost all their meadows are, 
to flood, to mow, and reflood ; watercourses to reopen and to make 
anew. Their early fruits to gather, to bring to market with their 
green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep, calves, foals, most of 
them prisoners, and poultry to look after. Their vines, as they 

• This corn affords a curious instance of how we sometimes translate the names 
of things. In Germany it is called buch-weizen, which means beech-wheat, because 
the grains are three-cornered, or shaped exactly like the nuts of the beech. We have 
retained the name buck, which in English gives no meaning, or a wrong one, as 
though it were culled after the buck or male fallow-deer. 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



51 



shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune, and thin out the 
leaves where they are too thick; and any one may imagine what a 
scene of incessant labour it is. 

We have described the harvest. It is surprising in what a 
little time, and with what a little bustle so vast an extent of corn- 
lands as Germany presents will be cleare'd. The greatest portion 
of the open country of Germany is corn-land; and when we take 
into consideration the little old wagons and cows with which many 
of the peasants draw home their crops, and what a way those who 
farm more largely, and have good teams, have to carry theirs, the 
farm-houses not being scattered about, but collected into dorfs, 
often very distant from each other, and then add to this that they 
house all their corn and hay too — you never see such a thing as a 
rick — it is wonderful ! You may see, for instance, the Rhine-plain 
cleared in fine weather in a fortnight of all its corn, the greater 
part of the ground where it stood again ploughed up and prepared 
for turnips or green food for autumn; and the girls in their great 
straw hats busy hoeing the tobacco. 

These girls, as I have said, are very 
picturesque; most of them bare-legged, 
and, according to the part of the country 
in which they live, in the quaint and showy 
costume of the district. In one place, in 
those great broad straw hats, wide as 
umbrellas ; in another, in little white caps 
or little black ones, covering just the back 
of the head ; here with a black handker- 
chief thrown over the head in the form of 
a hood; there with a red one in the same 
style; and in a third district with a white 
one. In one part they have the head tied 
in a red handkerchief, much in the French style; in another, with 
broad black ribbons hanging from the back of their high-peaked 
bonnet down their backs ; in others, a black hat, much like the 
Welch women ; and in others, with nothing at all on their heads, 
but having them exposed to the full blaze of an intense sun. 
Everywhere they are as healthy-looking as possible ; and as they 
go from the field with their hoes on their shoulders, you cannot 

e 2 




52 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

avoid remarking their upright figures and their free gait. Few of 
them are of more than the middle size, most under it; but they are 
built broad and strong, like little towers; and yet, spite of modern 
notions, have a most wholesome, heartsome, agreeable, and good- 
natured look. In fact, they far surpass in general the ladies of the 
educated classes, who, owing to the absurd system of swaddling in 
their infancy, and to tight-lacing and little exercise afterwards, 
present frequently the most lamentable spectacles of high-shouldered 
women imaginable. It is well for the beauty of the rising damsels 
that this swaddling system is now falling into disuse; but the 
grown-up young ladies are so strikingly marked by it, that you may 
almost to a certainty know a German girl from an English one, by 
only looking at their backs at a distance. The after laborious life 
of the country girls, and their freedom from stays, have remedied 
in a great measure this evil in them, and they look fifty per cent, 
better for it. 

If we are to judge from the old people, they must be long-lived; 
for no country, not even Scotland, can present a greater muster of 
the most extraordinary old women. With little caps on, or none 
at all, and bare legs and feet in summer, you see them in the 
markets and in the villages, and wonder how they could ever have 
been anything like what the young are. The plumpness, and 
sunburnt freshness of youth gone, then, indeed, the out-of-door 
toils of the women tell upon them; not in premature decay, but in 
a long-enduring toughness of deformity. Wrinkled, lean, grey, 
and stooping, they realize all our personal ideas of witches, but 
without their malignity or insanity. They are humble, still plod- 
ding, and often light-hearted creatures, full of good-nature, and 
useful to the last. 

Groups of reapers, marching homeward from the great plains, 
announce the close of harvest. The women have bags of gleaned 
corn on their heads, and their great straw-hats slung like shields 
on their arms. The men carry their bundles and their reaping- 
hooks, while one with a ribbon in his hat goes before playing on a 
pipe; and the whole troop follows singing. 

The latter part of the year, of course, is fully employed in 
gathering in their various crops. Pulling their hemp and flax, 
which you may sometimes sec them beating the seed out of, in the 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



53 



fields, into an outspread sheet; getting their tobacco, and drying- 
it in the upper parts of their houses, where they have contrivances 
for lifting up the tiles with little pegs to let in as much air as they 
want; or by hanging it to dry in open sheds, and on the walls of 
their houses, under shelter of the projecting roofs. In gathering 
and pitting their turnips, potatoes, mangel-wurzel, and other 
roots; and in their fruit gathering. About the end of October the 
walnuts are battered down with poles, and the leaves all carefully 
swept up for manure. There are ladders everywhere reared into 
the trees. Those fine blue plums which hang by such millions by 
the waysides, and would tear the trees to pieces if they were not care- 
fully secured, are gathered and converted, some into prunes, some 
into brandy, and others used for those nice large plum tarts or cakes, 
of half-a-yard wide, which they bake on tins, with the plums cut 
in halves, and stuck with the split side upwards all over them. 
Wagons are standing under the road-side apple trees, with their 
patient cows, awaiting their loads. The families are all abroad, 
father, mother, and children, collecting their stores. Baskets full 
of ruddy apples are standing about, and showers of golden apples 
are lying in the green grass. A great portion of this fruit is 
intended for cider, or as they call it, apple-wine, for their own 
consumption. You see the 
millstone and long axle at 
work out of doors, crushing 
the apples in a long oaken 
trough made for the pur- 
pose, and the presses at 
work in their outbuildings 
pressing out the juice. As 
you pass their cottages, you 
see the cellars, which generally open to the front, with doors set 
wide, and the huge tun which holds the family wine. The cider, 
which would be excellent if properly kept, and bottled at the right 
time, so as to be sparkling, must become dreadfully flat as drawn 
out of these monstrous tuns; but this flatness is probably much to 
their taste. It is the same which prevails generally with a good 
share of acidity in their wines, which might, if they pleased, be 
brisk as champagne; but it was not till lately that they acted on 



« -' 




54 OLT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

this idea, and established German champagne breweries, where now 
much is made of a very tolerable quality. 

But the great and crowning harvest is the vintage. This 
generally commences about the 12th of October, and is announced 
by the firing of guns, and ascent of rockets at night in all directions 
in the vineyards, which echo, and reverberate, and gleam amongst 
the hills, mingled with the shouts of old and young. This shouting 
and shooting are kept up, more or less, during the whole vintage. 
As every man begins his own vintage, he has a volley fired from 
his vineyard, the people shout, and others shout back to them. 

Goethe, in his u Hermann and Dorothea," has introduced a 
graphic description at once of a German housewife, a garden, a 
vineyard, and the vintage, where the mother of Hermann goes 
through the premises to seek him. 

So traversed she nimbly the long and the twofold court-yards through ; 

Left the stables behind, and the barns all so handsome with wood-work ; 

Stepped into the garden, which far as the -walls of the town stretched ; 

Passed through it, rejoicing in all that was growing around her; 

Set right leaning props 'neath the boughs of the apple and pear trees, 

Which weighed on them heavy with loads of their beautiful fruitage; 

Cleared insects away from the strong swelling heads of the cabbage — 

For a managing wife makes no step of her daily course useless; 

And so she was come to the end of the far-reaching garden; 

Was come to the arbour all covered with clustering woodbine ; 

But no son could she find, any more than she found in the garden. 

The door through the wall, which, by speciallest favour permitted, 

Their ancestor broke once, the worthy old Burgermeister, 

Now stood on the latch, leading forth from the green shady arbour; 

So the dry town-moat she stepped conveniently over, 

Where close on the street, with fences well guarded, the vineyard 

Rose in steep footpaths, its surface all turned to the sunshine. 

Here, then, she ascended, rejoicing herself even while climbing, 

In the fulness of bunches that challenged the leaves to conceal them. 

Shady and arched was the high middle path all with trellis, 

Where she mounted by steps all of Nature's unchiseled rudeness, 

While over her hung the Gutedel and Muscadel bunches, 

Redly-blue near each other, and all of the noblest greatness, 

All cultured witli care to pleasure the guests at their table. 

But the rest of the hill was with vine-stocks all openly planted, 

A smaller grape bearing, yet whence the most racy of wine comes. 

So climbed she, already rejoicing herself in the autumn, — 

In the festival day, on which the nation, exulting, 

The grape gathers anil treads, and the must into barrels collected. 

Fireworks, at evening, from every spot of the country 

Lighten ami thunder, and thus is the vintage must honoured. 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 55 

People are seen in all directions descending from the hills, with 
their tubs on their backs filled with grapes; carts are seen standing 
at the bottom, loaded with tubs in which to carry them away to the 
press; the people are discovered in all quarters in the vineyards, 
where they are gathering the grapes, and their laughter and voices 
come from afar to you. There is a general spirit of gladness and 
activity abroad. It is in this feeling of gladness and general activity 
that the charm of the vintage is to be found; for in other respects 
our poetical notions of a vintage are not very highly realized. 
Even in this slowly changing country, much of the old mode of the 
wine-making is altered. The treading of the grapes is generally 
done away with. They are crushed in the tubs with wooden 
mallets, or are put through a sort of mill set on the vat, and are 
ground by turning a handle. You see wagons loaded with large 
barrels going from the press to the owners, each barrel having a 
plug of a foot long stuck into the bung-hole, and a green sprig of 
the vine; and for the rest, the pressing, and the tunning, and all 
that, is no more than the work of any ordinary brewing, and goes 
on under cover, and where it is little seen. More is seen, indeed, 
of the casks, often enormously large, which are in preparation 
turned out of the cellars, and stand about in the streets of all the 
villages and towns, to be sweetened and repaired. Of much of the 
must, in many places, especially in bad seasons, they actually do 
not attempt to make wine, but convert it at once to vinegar. The 
vine culture is not considered a profitable one, and the growers are 
for the most part, poor. Here and there a celebrated tract is a 
valuable property; but the small proprietor of an ordinary vineyard, 
like the small proprietor of corn-land, is compelled to rush into the 
market at the very earliest day with his produce, and receives but 
the jackal's portion of the profits. They are the dealer and 
capitalist in this, as in everything else, who make the golden 
harvest. They who know how, not only to buy, but to hold, to 
mix, to give fine and fashionable names to the growth of nameless 
hills, in short, to impose cleverly on the credulous world. 

The vintage over, the simple peasantry, who have pouched only 
a lean price for the harvest of all their labours, are busy again 
carrying up fresh manure into their vineyards, and dig and work 
there till winter stops them, which, indeed, now strides on apace. 



56 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

In November you see the Germans, men and women, envelope 
themselves in their great cloaks whenever they appear abroad, 
which they never lay aside again till spring. Those of the men 
are of blue cloth, huge and wide, with capes reaching half way 
down them. They are generally furnished with fur collars; and 
many of them are lined with red, especially those of the students. 
Wrapped in these huge cloaks, three or four Germans will fill the 
greater part of a narrow street; and they can go dreaming along 
in them much to their own delight. On a cold or snowy day they 
will fling the cape over their head, and as you meet them, a hairy 
face peeping from a small opening in this great moving mountain 
of cloth, and a pipe hanging out of it, present you with a queer 
enough object. There is not a more characteristic mark of the 
different dispositions of the Germans and the English than these 
cloaks. Englishmen can seldom endure them; they prefer great- 
coats, as less cumbrous, leaving their arms free, and altogether as 
more thoroughly adapted to their more active habits and quicker 
movements. The ladies are as well wrapped in their cloaks, often 
lined throughout with fur; and the boys are seen running with 
their great fur gloves dangling on each side from the cord over their 
shoulders. 

But if any one thinks that the peasantry have finished their 
out-of-door labours, he is mistaken. You have only to take what 
you may anticipate as a solitary walk in the woods when the leaves 
have fallen, and you will find it anything but solitary. The woods 
swarm with men, women, and children, raking up and carrying 
away their great bundles of leaves; and the fall of a deep snow 
will only effectually drive them thence. 













<g HAP TIGS W. 

OTT-OF-DOOR LIFE CONTINUED. — THE K1RCHWEIGH, 
AND DANCE RESORT. 



The working classes of Germany have not only their out-of-door 
life of labour, but of pleasure too. In town and country they have 
their dances, balls, and concerts, which will come under the head of 
their social life; but in the country they have places of resort, 
often in common with the more educated classes, but where they 
alone dance in the open air, and their Kirchweighs or wakes are 
eagerly attended; and in the summer, are falling out pretty fre- 
quently within the circuit of a few miles, whither they resort in 
crowds. To these we must afford a few pages. 



58 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

The Wolfsbrunnen, about a mile out of Heidelberg, is a place 
of great popular resort, and may be taken as a specimen of such 
places, which are to be found all over Germany. It is a little 
woody glen, running up into the hills from the valleys of the 
Neckar. The valley of the Neckar is surrounded with fine woody 
hills, the lower slopes of which are occupied in the national manner, 
with vineyards and comslopes, while along the banks of the river 
lie cottages and villages, with their gardens and orchards about 
them. A higher road from Heidelberg leads you along the moun- 
tain side, a road said formerly to have been a favourite walk of 
Schiller's. It takes you past many cottages nestled in their orchards, 
in little sequestered hollows and green slopes, while above you are 
heights covered with woods, full of rocks, heath, and bilberry 

plants. 

The Wolfsbrunnen is a brunnen or spring, which is poured 
out into a fountain, and also with little streams from the hills, 
supplying a pond, clear as crystal, and various reservoirs for fish, 
where perhaps one of the most plentiful stocks of fine trout is to 
be seen in the world. Here, tradition says, that Jetta, a sor- 
ceress, was wont to live, and was torn to pieces by a wolf. You 
may imagine it, in old times, a dark and shaggy hollow enough 
for such inhabitants, and such a tragedy, but now it is all that is 
delightful. There is an inn built by the fountain. It is of wood, 
with outside galleries, so that spectators, on days of particular 
festivity, can stand in great numbers in them and witness what is 
going on below, as well as get a very sweet view across the valley 
of the Neckar. Trees overhang the house and fountain. The 
pond below is overhung with alders. Fine acacias, chestnuts and 
other trees, render the whole scene bowery and sylvan; and under 
them, and under sheds, stand tables and seats for parties, as in and 
about all such places, and all the country inns of Germany, and 
pretty much as in similar places and tea-gardens about London. 
Around rise lofty hills and solitary woods. On most days in 
summer, but especially on Sundays and holidays, people flock 
hither both from the town and the country. Groups arc found 
sitting at the tables, under the trees and sheds, with wine. beer. 
and pipes, curds, coffee, and other refreshments. Some are trol- 
ling about the private walks in the woodlands; some are lying on 



OVT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 59 

the dry turf of the hill-slopes; and others are looking in admiration 
at the fish in the fountain, the pools, or the little brook beyond. 

And surely to a fisher's eye never did a more transporting sight 
present itself. In the fountain itself you will sometimes see more 
trout, and such trouts ! than you have seen in your life besides. 
In the depots, in the pool and brook, you see again hundreds of 
noble and beautiful fish floating about in the water, which is so 
clear that you see the whole pool in a good light at a glance, 
though some parts of it are deep. The first day that I walked 
there with my two elder boys, they were almost beside themselves 
with delight. The men were weighing out fish for some distant 
market. The fountain was filled with trouts of six or eight pounds 
each, such as we had never seen in our lives, for there they are fed 
to this size. They were shovelled up in a hand-net from the 
fountain, as a man would shovel stones, weighed in a net hung 
on a post by the piazza, and were then conveyed in tubs to a cellar 
near, to be kept fresh for sending off. For half an hour or more 
they kept weighing out these beautiful trouts, which flounced about 
in the net in a manner which a fisherman would no doubt think 
very attractive, though to themselves not very agreeable. I saw 
them reckon up one lot in chalk on the post to more than a 
hundred weight, and the whole must have been several hundred 
weight. 

On Tuesday the 12th of July, was one of their wakes or kirch-^ 
weighs, at the village adjoining, and it was of course a great day 
at the Brunnen. As we dressed in the morning, we saw crowds 
of people going out that way; young people in their best, and 
musicians with their books and instruments. In the evening we 
walked thither, and a gay scene it was. All along the way parties 
were going and coming. They were of all classes, but chiefly of 
those from the tradesmen and their families down to the working 
classes. All were well dressed ; the young shopmen and mechanics, 
of course, imitating the students in dress and manner as much as 
possible ; the young women very well dressed, but all without caps 
or bonnets, as is the universal custom of those of the ordinary class. 
They have generally very well-shaped heads' of dark glossy hair, 
which is dressed in a very nice and graceful manner, and nothing- 
can be more pleasing than their appearance, as they thus walk out 



60 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

into the country, having on nothing more than they wear in the 
house, except a shawl. Many of thern are pretty, and all, from 
their simple and out-of-door habits, have a clear hue, and tone of 
health and glad-heartedness about them, which is a beauty itself. 

As we approached the Brunnen, we saw a dense crowd there. 
The sheds and tables were all occupied. There were groups of 
fierce-looking, whiskered, and smoking students; other groups of 
families, with their choppin or glass-measure of wine, and bread 
and butter, or cheese, and sundry cakes, enjoying themselves in 
quiet as they looked on the gaiety around them. The upper outside 
galleries of the house were filled with gay spectators. Donkies 
were standing ready saddled for such as chose to hire them for the 
young women returning to the town, and music announced that 
dancing was going on near. This we found was in a large shed 
close to the inn. Several of the trout reservoirs were planked over 
to prevent people walking into them, and a throng of gazers 
surrounded the dancing scene. There was a sort of orchestra at 
one end, at which twenty couples were waltzing. It would have 
looked strange in England to see shop-boys and girls, nay, 
shoemakers' and tailors' apprentices, joiners, smiths, boots, or 
anybody, waltzing with their smart-dressed girls in the shed at a 
country wake. It would want but this to put waltzing out of 
fashion with all the other classes of our countrymen. But Germany 
is the country of waltzing ; the waltz is the universal and almost 
only dance of the people, and they could just as well live without 
tobacco as it. From the highest saloon in Vienna or Berlin, to the 
lowest shed in the village, or to the village green, round spin the 
Germans, and are as happy as if they were in Paradise ; nay, what 
would Paradise be to them without a long pipe, a tall glass of beer, 
a smart girl, and a brisk waltz ? The dancing indeed, here, would 
not have disgraced a splendid saloon. The dancers were, for the 
most part, people under the middle size, and had nothing remark- 
able in their appearance ; but some of the girls were very pretty, 
and this exercise gave an attractive glow to their naturally fresh 
checks. Here and there was a student in the circle, dancing with 
some pretty girl of Heidelberg; and we could not avoid being 
reminded of Goethe, as he describes himself in his life, mixing in 
such scenes at Frankfort, with the fair girl destined afterwards to 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 61 

figure as Margaret in Faust. Indeed what writer of Germany has 
so completely transferred to his works the popular life of his 
country as Goethe has ? His descriptions, both of the country and 
its people, come before one continually with a delightful surprise. 
The dancing here was not carried to that pitch of mad velocity 
which you see in the popular cassinos of Vienna, especially at Sperls 
in the Leopoldstadt, or the Goldene Birne in the Londstrasse, 
where the same couples will often dance in an enormous saloon 
every tour from seven o'clock in the evening to two or three in the 
morning, at the most amazing rate ; in fact, whirling away like the 
figures in the hall of Eblis. Different parties here went in, danced 
moderately for awhile, and then went out to the tables near, to rest 
and refresh. Amongst these dancers there were occasionally some 
who could not be seen without a smile. One little fellow espe- 
cially, in a greyish coat, and with a mass of hair which completely 
hid his face, who waltzed in a way that would have made even Job 
in the midst of his potherds laugh. He stuck out his left elbow, 
and held out his partner's right hand in the oddest manner, while 
he spun about like a penny- piece turned on a table, more than a 
man dancing with a young woman. 

We were told that the gaiety would be kept up till two or three 
o'clock in the morning; and, in fact, we had evidence of it in 
numbers returning as late as that past our house in full chorus ; 
but great numbers were retiring at the early hour of eight o'clock; 
and it was a beautiful sight to see them in their gay colours 
streaming along the road, which ran between the walnut and other 
fruit trees, and between the standing corn, now brightening for the 
sickle. The students who had been dancing, were now sauntering 
back in groups, and a number of handsome girls had also mounted 
the asses, and came galloping them past us, all laughter and fun. 
The whole scene was one that might have given a good lesson to 
the same class in our country on similar occasions. There was no 
drunkenness, no quarreling; but the Germans, famous in all ages > 
for drinking, were gay with wine and youth, and yet steering off 
home in full, though cheerful decorum, to an early bed. 

These kirch weighs, or as they are in many places corrupted to, 
kervies, or kermes, arrest your attention in every part of the 
country. As you approach a village, you see a tall pole, like our 



62 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

May-pole, erected in the centre of the village, hung with garlands, 
and hear a hum of music, and the bustle of waltzing feet. The 
general features of a village during this merry-making, I can give 
from what we soon afterwards witnessed on the other side of the 
Neckar, at the dorf of Ziegelhausen. A boat went up the river, 
with a band of musicians gaily playing, and all hung with banners 
and garlands. Wagon-loads of people, all singing together, were 
seen advancing on the opposite bank. The ferry-boats were all 
congregated opposite to the village, with garlands hung on poles at 
their prows, busy carrying over people. When we got across, we 
found the whole place alive. Parties were sitting in the orchards 
under the trees, chinking wine with their friends, and, of course, 
smoking. All the public-houses had banners and garlands hanging 
out from their windows ; their rooms, or temporary booths, erected 
for the occasion, were decorated with festoons and garlands, and 
were filled with parties whirling away in their everlasting waltz. 
The street was filled with streams of promenaders, with here and 
there stalls of toys, gingerbread, etc., as in England at a wake — 
but how different in themselves ! 

Though the same sort of attractions were provided for the 
children and feast-goers, yet every article was so totally foreign and 
queer. There were trumpets, and wooden horses, and rattles, and 
swords, and such like, but they would have made the children of 
England stare at their oddity. Some stalls were covered with 
drinking-glasses, stained of various bright colours, and with mottoes 
on them in gilt letters, as, Zum Andenken Freundschaft — a token of 
friendship; cups, and such things. The toys were very odd and 
very cheap; hussars on horseback, birds, dolls, etc.; not Dutch, as 
ours are, but German, and of a most primitive German air too. You 
had a gay toy for nine kreutzers, or threepence, which would have 
cost a shilling in England. But the gingerbread stalls would have 
amused our young folks the most. The gingerbread was all made 
up into heart-shapes, except a few pieces in the form of little pairs 
of shoes. These hearts of different sizes were painted of different 
colours, and ornamented with a sort of garland- work of some 
material, to imitate flowers, leaves, and gold. On every heart was 
printed a verse in German, more remarkable lor the variety of the 
sentiments than for elegance or grammatical correctness. Most of 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. G3 

these verses, of course, are expressive of love and friendship, and 
may be presented to young damsels very significantly. We may 
give the two following ones as specimens, one of which is full of 
wise saws, only intimating that the variety is endless. — 

Freundschaft und Libe ist ewig verband, 
Es kniipfen sie beide ein himmlisches Band. 

" Friendship and love is ever united : together, they knit a heavenly 
band." 

Viel bedenke, wenig sage ; 
Deine Noth nicht Jedem klage ; 
Hore viel, thu nichts antworten ; 
Sei behutsam aller Orten ; 
Dich in jedes Kreuz wohl schicke, 
So machest du ein Meisterstiicke. 

" Think much, say little ; don't complain of thy trouble to 
every one; hear much; give little answer; be on thy guard every- 
where. In every difficulty carry thyself discreetly; so makest thou 
a masterpiece." This lesson may, indeed, be styled a masterpiece 
of German caution, which they inculcate, and act on, on all 
occasions. 

There were games of chance, on a similar principle to those at 
wakes and fairs in England, but played with apparatus to us of a 
very queer and uncouth construction, which, nevertheless, lured 
the kreutzers out of the pockets of lads and men most unmerci- 
fully. A sort of diced ball, having numbers up to ten marked on 
its different sides, was dropped into a rude wooden cylinder cut 
spirally in the inside, and went revolving down till it fell on a 
board marked with similar figures. The hazarder named the figure 
he cast for, dropped in his ball, and if it came with that side up 
which had that number on it, he had a prize. There lay purses and 
similar tempting things, but not once in a hundred times was one 
carried off. It seemed as if it was the only business of the players 
to drop in the ball, and of the stall-keepers to pick up their money. 

There were also roundabouts of wooden horses for the children, 
but even these were different to ours. Every little funnyhorse had 
a little rod stuck by the saddle upright, and every rider had a short 
iron rod with a wooden handl§ given him, with which, as he rode 
round, he tilted at a curious piece of machinery, which, in the end 



\ 



64 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

of a board ; contained wooden rings. These rings, on the iron rod 
passing through them, easily detached themselves, and were carried 
away on the boys' little spears, who then took them off, and placed 
them on the upright rod by their saddle. As one ring was 
detached, another rolled down the machinery and took its place, 
and so the roundabout revolved till all these rings had been carried 
off, or thrown out on the ground by the tilters. The boy who had 
the most rings had the privilege of riding again for nothing ; and 
if he were very dexterous, might continue to ride all day if he 
pleased. 

This addition of tilting to the roundabout gives it a great 
advantage over our English ones, and so attractive is it that even 
grown people will engage in the sport, as may be seen by any one 
who visits the place of popular amusement in the Prata at Vienna. 
There the roundabouts have their own regular houses, where they 
continue permanently, and where, all summer, especially on Sun- 
days and holidays, numbers of children, nursemaids, and young 
men and women, may be found on the horses or in the chairs, 
going round, and tilting at a sort of quintain, while one or two 
musicians play. 

It would astonish the good people of England to see the stalls 
set out on a Sunday at these wakes, this gambling going on, and 
the public-houses filled with dancers and drinkers; but nowhere 
on the Continent, not even in Protestant Germany, is the keeping 
of the Sunday regarded as in England. Shops remain in a great 
measure open, all sorts of theatres and places of amusement are 
open, and the people look on the strictness of England as a species 
of gloomy ascetic severity, which makes no part of real religion. 
It is, however, to be hoped, that while we steer clear of Aguewism, 
we shall still maintain our own sacred notions of the Sunday, and 
especially make it rigorously a day of rest for the servants, artisans, 
and shopmen, as far as possible. It is melancholy to see young 
men who have been confined all the week, dangling about in the 
shops, where they have seldom anything to do, leaning with their 
shoulders against the door-posts, when they should be in the free 
air, breathing health of both body and mind. 

Every public-house, at a kirchweigh, has its cheesecakes, where 
people go to cat them to their wine; and in- doors and out, people 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 65 

are eating, drinking, dancing, playing, and all is music and merri- 
ment. Every private house, too, has its feast, its visitors, its 
merriment. The poorest then make a cake, if they do not make 
one through the year besides, and the people from the city walk 
out and fill the houses of their acquaintance, eat and drink with 
them, and then walk back to supper. Monday and Tuesday are 
feast days, but the great holiday is the Sunday. On Tuesday they 
bury the weigh; that is, all the garlands which, had been hung up 
with much shouting and drinking and singing, and then close the 
feast. 

This burying of holidays is a general practice. Traces of this 
custom are yet to be met with in some of our own villages. They 
meet in some of them, as in Northamptonshire, "to bury the 
wake ; " and though this phrase merely means to finish it up with 
a good drinking bout, it is a sufficient testimony to the old Saxon 
custom once existing there. They bury the carnival, fast-nacht, or 
Shrove-tide, in the same way. 




©KlAIPYHia wa = 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE CONTINUED. — OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE OF THE 
PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 



In England the out-of-door life of the educated classes presents its 
most prominent features in field-sports, racing, pleasure-touring, 
and visiting of watering-places. Racing, hunting, shooting, riding, 
and driving fill up the bulk of the out-of-door life of the gentry. 
They are integral and inseparable parts of the life and pleasure of 
these classes, and are carried to a pitch of perfection and of science 
of which the like is not to be found in any other part of the world. 
This arises out of the peculiar character and circumstances of 
England, in which it differs from all the world beside. Its wealth, 
its activity, its high refinement and luxurious style of life, its 
opulenl nobility and gentry, all tend to produce this description of 
out-of-door exercise; but still more than this, the singular and 
unique character of the country in England, which again exists 
nowhere else. 



ovt-of-door life. t>7 

As we have repeatedly remarked, the enclosed condition of the 
country in England has made every man's estate his paradise there. 
It has given rise to the erection of the most beautiful and luxu- 
riously furnished country seats everywhere. It has scattered them, 
not into grouped towns, but amongst the villages and flowery fields 
the whole island over. Wealthy farm-houses and picturesque 
cottages are dispersed amongst them, and amongst the woods and 
meadows from one end of the country to the other. The traveller, 
when he emerges from the hill-tracts, does not find alone a ploughed 
field, and stretch his eyes in eager anticipation of the next far-off 
lying village; but he travels forward amidst a perpetual series of 
beauties and attractions. Around everywhere are richest fields, 
whose dividing hedges of hawthorns, and hedgerow trees are full of 
a poetical beauty. Herds and flocks fill the fields and hills with a 
rich variety. Old lanes hang their dewy boughs, and their wild- 
roses and elder-flowers over him. He passes through villages, 
where all is so neat, so reposing, so picturesque, that every house 
looks like a home to be coveted; and by ancient parks, where the 
old oak of England stretches its sturdy boughs over the ruddy 
herds of deer. These things all have tended to create the country 
life of England, and to give it its peculiar charm. 

Different circumstances have produced a different taste and 
consequent out-of-door life in Germany. The open country presents 
none of those attractions which ours does. The educated classes 
reside almost wholly in towns, and acquire more exclusively town 
habits. Kacing, which can be as well pursued in the outskirts of 
towns as in the country, though it is not of native growth, has of 
late years been introduced, and is practised in some of the larger 
cities in the English style. Angling, on the contrary, has never 
acquired a thorough hold of the Germans, and is not in the least a 
national practice. If you see an angler, he is almost sure to be an 
Englishman. One would have thought that the dream-loving and 
contemplative German would have found something particularly to 
his liking in angling; but there you soon perceive that he finds no 
dreamy retirement on the banks of his streams. The larger ones 
have their banks lined with houses and villages, and swept with the 
towing-ropes of ever-passing boats, so that they afford none of those 
hidden nooks and overhanging bushes in which the fisherman so 

p2 



68 OUT-OF-DOOR-LIFE 

much delights. If he get out to the lesser streams in the plain, 
there all is bare and unattractive. Probably, too, were other cir- 
cumstances favourable, the German might fall into reveries and 
day-dreams, and forget his line till the caricature was realized, and 
he found that a spider. had made its web in the angle of the line 
and rod, and already caught several flies since he sate down on the 
bank. However, the Germans are no anglers, and scarcely more of 
horsemen. As is the general practice on the Continent, they seem 
to ride rather for parade than pleasure. Their horsemanship is, in 
fact, the most uncomfortable thing in the world, and makes one's 
back ache to see it. They sit as erect as posts, and jolt along 
without springing in the saddle in a way that must make every 
joint of their back-bones, as well as of their limbs, undergo the 
most cruel of martyrdoms. They tell you that the English are the 
worst riders in the world, because in a sharp trot they lean forward 
and rise in the stirrups. But knowledge of anatomy and the 
common principles of mechanical philosophy might shew them, that 
to sit perpendicularly, as they do, converts all the bones in their 
bodies into pestles to pound each other to pieces, and makes their 
whole weight come bump, bump on their horses' backs, most pain- 
fully and detrimentally to them ; while the Englishman, on the 
contrary, throwing the pillar of his bones out of the perpendicular, 
brings his muscles and tendons to act as springs, and by that 
gentle, and, in a good rider, almost imperceptible rising in the 
stirrups, he accords his motion harmoniously to that of his horse, 
and both go together at any speed with a delightful smoothness 
and elasticity, which give a spur to the animal spirits, and make 
rapid riding one of the most genuine luxuries of life. 

The consequences of the two different styles of riding are obvious 
z enough. In England horse exercise is a universal passion. The 
wild rush of the hunt becomes an intense excitement, which makes 
even the damage done to crops, and other attendant disadvantages 
in so richly cultivated a country as England, disregarded; and 
horseback becomes to the ladies a source of great health and 
pleasure, and no doubt of increase of personal beauty, while it 
gives by their graceful participation in it an additional charm and 
ornament to out-of-door existence. 

On the contrary, in Germany the ladies may be said not to ride 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 69 

at all. It is one of the rarest of sights to see a German lady on 
horseback; nor do the gentlemen seem much to affect it. They 
seem to learn under the guidance of a mustachioed Rittmeister to 
ride, rather to discover how disagreeable it is than ever to practise 
it. You see them go jogging along like a troop of pokers stuck 
into their saddles, behind their rittmeister, and then you seldom 
see them on horseback afterwards ; and when you do, it is always 
at a most considerate pace. In fact, I never see a German on 
horseback but I feel very sorry for his uncomfortable situation, and" - 
wish him well at home again. For the most part, however, they 
take care to seat themselves, not on horseback, but in easy carriages, 
where instead of racking their bones, they may smoke their pipes ■ 
and think. 

Hunting, of course, is out of the question. If a man were to 
ride in this style in a regular stiff fox or stag hunt, he would be 
pounded to a jelly, and be floored about as often as he had occa- 
sion to leap. But, besides this, there are a dozen insuperable 
objections to hunting in this country. In the woods, where the 
game chiefly lies, they cannot ride. In the plains there could be 
no fun in scampering for ever over a ploughed field. Deer, or 
hare,, or fox, would there take speedily to the wooded hills, if they 
were near, and if they were not near, a thousand bauers would be, 
who would raise a fiercer outcry against their galloping over their 
green crops and springing wheat, than ever was heard in a year of 
rebellion. The popular division of the land is a dead hindrance to 
hunting. It has been here and there attempted; and English 
packs of hounds have been imported by the princes; but the 
peasants put it down wherever it appeared, in a very little time. 
The German bauers and farmers have no faith, and it is quite 
impossible to persuade them, as it has been attempted to persuade 
the farmers in England, that it does their corn good to have it in 
winter ridden over and torn to pieces by a troop of horsemen. On 
the contrary they insist on wild-schaden, or damages done by game, ' 
wherever deer, hares, or other game are encouraged by the nobility 
to the injury of their crops ; and the laws support them strongly 
in this, and give them damages strictly, so that many nobles and 
princes have yearly large sums on this score to pay. 

All field-sports, therefore, in Germany resolve themselves into 



V* 



70 OUT-01-DOOR LIFE 

shooting. What theycall the Jagd, or hunt, is mere shooting; in 
fact, hunting they have none. Of this, the Treib-jagd, or battue, 
is the most striking and animated; where they get a number of 
bauers to encircle a considerable portion of woodland, and drive all 
the animals within that circle to a central point, where the sports- 
men stand and shoot down the flying creatures as they come. An 
odd medley sometimes makes its appearance: hares, foxes, deer, 
roe; and sometimes again, the people of the neighbourhood, not 
wishing to have the game thus thinned out, have in the night 
driven the woods as diligently outwards, so that the anxious 
sportsmen stand in eager expectation, and, finally, see nothing but 
the bauers who are beating the bushes. 

To many of these observations, however, there are great and 
remarkable exceptions. In Germany the property in the game may 
be, and very generally is, held distinct from the property in land. 
The general case is, as we have observed, that the land is parcelled 
out into small family allotments ; and where this is the case, and 
the bauers holding the land, and caring little for the property in 
game, it is not to be expected that they will either encourage it to 
the damage of the crops, or allow damage in its pursuit by the 
owner of the game, without speedy and strict compensation. But, 
as in all countries, here and there, however rarely, lie large estates, 
especially in wood, where the game is preserved by the wealthy 
owner for his pleasure; and in Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, etc., 
where the estates are large, and rather in the hands of the nobles 
than in the people — where, in fact, over vast extent of lands the 
people are serfs and property themselves — here game reaches the 
very acme of its abundance, and the love of field-sports is ardent 
and universal. These are the great countries of game and of 
battues; and my readers will peruse with pleasure, and many of 
them with surprise, an article, given by a qualified hand, and from 
the most authentic sources, in the Allegmeiiie Zeitung, on the 
Field Sports of Austria, to present, as he says, a tolerable concep- 
tion of the inconceivable wealth of game with which that empire 
is blessed. "We deduct from these statements," he observes, "the 
unusual appearance of lynxes, bearSj wolves, etc., which in indi- 
vidual instances and in particular provinces only present them- 
selves. We speak doI of the elk or the ibex, which arc totally 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 71 

extinct. The last ibex, so far as I know, was shot by the French 
Marshal Marmont, in the hostile invasion of 1805, in Illyria. 
Since this period the writer has not been able to discover that a 
single one has been met with throughout Austria. We shall here, 
also, confine ourselves to the very heart of the hunt in the centre 
of the monarchy, that is, of Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, 
because it is only out of these provinces that positive and indis- 
putable documents for the purpose lie before me; and will not 
even refer to Hungary, with its myriads of water-fowl, nor to the 
quail catching of the Bannat. Yet must we not pass without a 
thought the alps of Styria and Upper Austria, on whose sun-bright 
ice-fields the chamois, now in most quarters grown scarce, yet draw 
together in herds, and look down into the blue mirrors of lakes 
which roll their waves at their feet. The Archduke John, a cele- 
brated mountain hunter, and like all the princes of his house, an 
excellent shot, has in his preserves alone more than three thousand 
herd of chamois, of which three hundred are yearly shot. Wild 
swine, in the hereditary states of the monarchy, are found only in 
close preserves, but here in multitudes. Deer of all kinds are 
for the most part in the open forests; and they are especially 
the wide thick grown meadows of the Danube, the March, Taja, 
and in Bohemia, the vast open mountain woods, that are stocked 
with them. 

" The little complaint of damages from game which occurs even 
in those provinces where agriculture is the most flourishing, is a 
testimony of the small occasion for such damage in the field where 
proper care is taken to fodder at the necessary seasons. Such 
damage, of course, is done here as everywhere; but the Austrian 
game proprietors make immediate compensation to the full amount 
of the injury sustained, and no one ever hears of legal actions 
for its recovery. The income derived from game is such as to 
allow of this compensation without niggardliness, and the proceeds 
still remain sufficiently important without reckoning the plea- 
sure itself of the chase. There is scarcely a passionate lover of 
the chase, even of the common rank, who, if he be a worthy 
fellow, does not find occasion enough to satisfy his fullest thirst of 
sport, though he may not possess himself a single yoke of land. 
The great proprietors do not find it possible, either without or with 



v 



72 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

their friends, to hunt out sufficiently their game tracts. The ex- 
tent of these tracts, especially of hares in winter, makes often a 
hundred and more shooters necessary; and thus, besides the most 
distinguished guests, nearly all the people of good standing — the 
clergyman, the physician, the surgeon, the shopkeeper, the post- 
master, the innkeeper, in short, every really respectable sportsman, 
all are bade right welcome. As in military life, here the rank of a 
sportsman ennobles every one that belongs to it; and it is hardly 
conceivable with what amiability the representatives of the noblest 
blood in Austria conduct themselves in such cases, and what a 
general gladness smooths out every distinction of ranks, without, 
on that account, any one forgetting the position which otherwise 
he is called to fill in life and in the world. So becomes the passion 
of field-sport in Austria a universal, and, as I have already re- 
marked, a really national one. To this end nothing is neglected 
which is conducive to the increasing and to the supporting of the 
game out of the season, and to the rooting out of everything that 
is injurious to^i^ For instance, the extirpation of destructive 
animals in the four court-preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna, 
the Prater, Auhof, Wolkersdorf, and Laxenburg alone, not in the 
combined state and family possessions, according to extracts now 
lying before me, amounted in 1841 to the following numbers : — 
Foxes, 1181; martins, 1187; weasels, 4689; polecats, 4321; 
hedgehogs, 1283; dogs, 3319; cats, 5583; eagles, 35; large 
hawks, 4902; small hawks, 4917; owls, 1725; crows and mag- 
pies, 26,491. Total, shot and captured, 59,633 head. It is clear 
that it is only by such a system of thorough extermination of 
destructive creatures on the one hand, and of the greatest possible 
attention to the breed and to the carrying of the game well through 
the winter on the other, that such a mass of game can be yearly 
shot, and yet the stock yearly renewed. 

" In respect to the abundance of game Bohemia may stand first, 
then Moravia, then Lower Austria, and after these the other pro- 
vinces, although the management of the game and economy of the 
hunt in the first three appear pretty much the same. To give in 
some degree a conception of the quantity of game in these, the 
following notice may serve. According to the shooting lists of the 
four already named imperial hunting-grounds, the Prater, Auhof, 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 73 

Wolkersdorf, arjdLaxenburg, which have been obligingly laid before 
me, there were shot in the year 1836 — stags, 784; fallow deer, 60 
black deer, 709; roe, 109; hares, 12,680; wild rabbits, 215 
badgers, 6; pheasants, 4731; partridges, 6805; snipes, 327 
sundries, 27 — total, 26,483. In the year 1840 the total amounted 
to 20,559; and in 1841 to 23,075 head. According to the shoot- 
ing list of the Prince Lichstenstein at Feldsperg, furnished to me 
by the forest-master, there and in the adjoining preserves, were 
killed by the Prince and a few guests in the autumn of 1839, 
14,054 head, and in 1840, 18,934. From similar documents 
furnished by the forest-master, it appears that there were delivered 
from his office, of red, fallow, and black deer, and roe, in 1822, 
1182 head; 1825, 1419; 1827, 1228; and 1828, 1280. 

u If we now make, according to these data, a moderate average 
for the whole country, there will stand forth an amount for Austria, 
Moravia, and Bohemia, which exceeds all belief; and yet this is 
really the case ; and when some particular circumstances lower the 
product of one year, that of the following year is . sure to be 
proportionably high. The hunts we have noticed are certainly 
amongst the very best in Austria and Bohemia, but they are by no 
means the only ones. The hunting-grounds of Graf Hardegg, of 
Graf Breuner, the stag-hunt of Prince Dietrichstein, in the open 
meadows of the Herrschaft Nicolsburg, are celebrated, There are 
hundreds of preserves in Moravia where from 1000 to 2000 hares 
arelshot in a single battue. Pass thence to Bohemia, and we must 
use a much more liberal calculation. There we come at once on 
the immense number of pheasant preserves, in number and in 
amount of produce perfectly unequalled in Europe. Thus the 
Herrschaft Posselberg, belonging to Prince Schwartzenberg, delivers 
from its preserves its annual tale of more than 7000 head. Through 
this alone a striking amount of overweight is thrown into the scale 
of game product. It is with the fame of pheasants as with that of 
Merinos, every proprietor boasts to have the best. Now they are 
the pheasants of Prince Colloredo, now those of Prince Trautmans- 
dorf, to which the game dealers give the preference; then they are 
those of Prince Dietrichstein of Lobochwitzer, where also the very 
best roes are claimed to be produced ; then those of Graf Schlick, 
of Graf Klebelsberg, and so on. The truth of the matter is that, 



'-v 



74 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

on the whole, the .pheasantries in the centre of Bohemia are more 
productive than those on the borders; but again, amongst those 
particular years make a particular difference ; and sometimes this, 
""and sometimes that locality is attended with more auspicious cir- 
cumstances. But here also partridge and hare shooting exceed 
even that which Austria and Moravia could shew in rivalry of it. 
Hunts, wherein half-a-dozen shooters in one morning bring down 
their 600 and 800 birds, are by no means uncommon. Six or seven 
persons, who a few years ago spent the season with Prince Traut- 
mansdorf, shot by the middle of January, about 15,000 head of all 
kinds. At a great battue with the Prince Schwartzenberg, where 
about forty shooters were present, were 6000 head of hares, part- 
ridges, and pheasants, killed. These hunts, as well as those of 
Prince Auersperg, Lobkowitz, Kinsky, the Grafs YTaldstein 
(descendant of the celebrated Wallenstein), Elam, Schlick, and 
numberless others, stand pretty much in the same category, 
according as they are situated more or less distantly from the 
border mountains. 

" Before these results vanish all the game products of all the 
countries of Europe; even of the expensive parks of the wealthy 
English. These results are the more striking, because, as already 
remarked, this game is chiefly raised in the open country, and the 
parks are scarcely brought at all into the calculation. Even the 
pheasantries, which in Bohemia yield a by-no-means contemptible 
rental, are for the most part wild, and on these the customarily 
early drawings have by degrees contracted. 

"If it be asked by what means these provinces have arrived at 
so extraordinary a wealth of game, we can only give the following 
reasons. The possessions here are seldom parcelled out, but hang 
in great well-compacted masses together. As much value is 
attached to the hunt, and the passion for it universally diffused, 
of course something is expended upon it. Pheasants and part- 
ridges are caught in great numbers, and kept through the winter 
in chambers, that they may be let loose, undiminished by the 
severities of winter, strong and healthy, in spring to rear their 
broods. In severe frosts and deep snows the deer are foddered, 
and corn is scattered for the feathered game. Finally, the very 
large and close-kepi game coversj in the middle of extensive tillage 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 75 

plains, where hares, partridges, and pheasants find the most 
admirable brood spots, and every possible protection from every 
destructive induence, constitute the most effectual of the means of 
their flourishing and abundance. As the game draw into these in 
winter, this lightens essentially the labour of w T inter feeding, and 
secures gardens, vineyards, and avenues from the damage which 
hares in winter do to trees. Of course the cost of all this is no 
subject of regret, because the product and the sale of game are 
richly proportionate. If damage is done, the compensation is 
made readily, and without compelling the complainant to have 
recourse to the office of the district to enforce his claim ; all goes 
quietly, justly, and in good humour. On this point we appeal to 
those numerous lovers of field-sport who from different countries 
annually draw hither; their experience and inquiries will enable 
them to say whether we state the fact or not. Finally, there are 
many advocates amongst us who are lovers of field-sports, and who 
partake its pleasures ; but there are none amongst them who have 
been found in the predicament of endeavouring to persuade their 
excited hearers in court, by groundless declamations on game 
oppressions and game injuries, that a flock of partridges is just as 
bad as an army of locusts. The hunt is not yet with us system- 
atically cried down ; it is yet a people's pleasure — 

The solemn war-god's joyous bride ; 

and still with us is many a peasant a hare-roaster, while in many 
other countries, scarcely a game damage is paid, and therefore 
there, cats instead of hares have long been twirling on the spits." 

Roe and deer, however, are the chief game, and give the greatest 
interest to the sportsman over the greater part of Germany. The 
good old wild-boar hunt is now, in most places, extinct, and where 
it remains is generally a battue of the most harmless description. 
This is in the parks of the princes and nobles. The drivers beat 
up the woods ; the wild swine run till they come in contact with a 
fence, often a fence of boards stretched across the park for the 
purpose. About the centre of this fence, at an opening in the 
wood, is raised a sort of stage, where the sportsmen stand and fire 
at the swine as they run past in face of the fence. 

The ordinary sportsman of Germany cuts a totally different 



76 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

figure to that of England. He has seldom such an air about him; 
seldom is attended by dogs of such breed, or goes to the field with 
such a finish and style of apparatus. He, as well as his dogs, 
seems to belong more to the wildness of woods and thickets, and 
he is equipped in a homely mode more adapted to that purpose. 
A rough surtout, strong boots, and his trousers turned up three or 
four inches at the bottom to keep them out of the mud and the 
wet grass ; a little cap, that as much as possible may avoid contact 
with boughs, and receive from them as little injury as possible; 
and a game-bag at his side, often covered with a net-work, with 
long dangling tassels, or with a hairy cover like a great pouch, — 
these present a general description of his appearance. He carries 
his gun in a manner totally different to the English shooter. In- 
stead of hanging it on his arm with the muzzle depressed, or 
throwing it on his shoulder for a change, he hangs it by a strap on 
his back as he goes to or comes from the field, or suspends it by 
the strap, which is an indispensable appendage to his gun, on one 
shoulder, putting his elbow on the barrel, and letting the butt 
swing behind. Throughout the vast woods of Germany much and 
intense sport is enjoyed everywhere, though little of this is seen by 
the general observer. 

The J'agers, or keepers, are prominent characters in all the tales 
and poetry of Germany; as much so as the knights and robber - 
knights. In former times the jager was generally both ranger 
and forest-master — guardian, as we say, of both vert and venison, 
both wood and game; and German fireside stories, romances, 
legends, and popular poetry, are full of j'agers, solitary jager- 
houses, and skirmishes between the jagers and robbers and 
poachers. Of late years, much of this romance has been annihi- 
lated by the advance of civilization and order, as well as by the 
offices of jager and forest-master being separated. The one, with 
his undcr-kcepers, looks after the game; the other, with his work- 
men and wood-police, looks after the wood. All public woods, 
whether they belong to the state or particular parishes, are put 
under public administration. A forest-master is appointed to each 
district, and in each large town is the Forst-Verwaltung, or wood 
office, where all the affairs relating to the woods and forests are 
transacted. A police is appointed for the woods as for everything 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 77 

else, who wear a particular costume and badge, and go out daily 
to their rounds in the forests, armed with a sort of tomahawk. 

With this tomahawk is connected a laughable incident, and one 
which shews how easily cursory travellers may pick up the most 
absurd ideas of the institutions of a foreign country. One of my 
boys one day, soon after our arrival in Germany, asked me if I had 
not observed these men with their tomahawks ; I said, yes. Do 
you know, said he, the face of one of these tomahawks is hollow, 
and that in the hollow stand two projecting capital letters (F. F.) 
Forst FreveL or Forest Crime. That when a man is caught by 
these police stealing wood, and is convicted before the magistrate, 
he is stamped in the hand with this tomahawk, and the letters 
cuttiDg into the flesh mark him for life ? 

Thinking this too savage to be true, the first time that I met 
one of these men I asked him, as well as my then small stock of 
German would allow, if this were the real use of the tomahawk ? 
He replied, "ja, ja!" "yes, yes!" And what then do you with 
the little sharp axe edge at the back of it? He scraped the palm 
of his left hand with it, and then struck it with the face of the 
hammer, as to intimate that they first pared off the skin and then 
struck the blow. The thing seemed clear enough. There could 
be no doubt of the matter; and I went away quite satisfied of it, 
and that it was a most barbarous practice. To the first Germans 
of education that I met with, I expressed my abhorrence of this 
savage custom, at which they burst out into a laugh, and informed 
me that I had made one little mistake. It was not the man who 
was thus marked, but the wood that he had stolen, and which it 
then became felony for any one to remove. Had I been merely 
passing through the country, so clear did the affair seem, that I 
should not readily have been convinced of the error. 

But we must come to the great and prominent out-of-door life 
of Germany. It is not then in their riding, fishing, hunting, or in 
such public games as racing, cricketing, rowing, etc.; but in the 
enjoyment of walking, of public gardens, of coffee and wine- 
drinking in such places, and above all, in open-air concerts. The 
enjoyment of music and social pleasures in the open air is the 
grand summer enjoyment of Germany. It is the universal passion 
from one end of the country to the other. It is the same in every 



78 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

village, in every town, in every capital. Public walks, public music, 
caffees and cassinos, coffee and wine-drinking and smoking and knit- 
ting under trees, call out the whole population, high and low, great 
and small, old and young; and there does not seem a care from Berlin 
to Strassburg, from Cologne to Pesth. Nay, much as the French 
live out of doors, the Germans far excel them in this species of life. 
All their musical art is called forth, and their greatest masters are 
employed, to give a charm to this mode of social existence. Every 
means is adopted to give facility to the enjoyment of this taste. 
The heart of the Germans, too, is bound to the heart of nature 
with a deeper and holier feeling than that of the French. It is 
true that they have not that full and perfect and permanent country 
life that we have. The habits and institutions of their country do 
not allow it; but they have not the less love of nature than we 
have, nor do they enjoy it less in their way than we do. Nay, in 
some respects they enjoy it far more, for they have taken measures 
to bring the beauty of nature to their very doors, to introduce it 
into the suburbs and the very heart of their towns, and to unite it 
to all the charms of art and of social life. 

There is one advantage that their towns universally possess 
over ours; and that is, in the abundance of public walks, and 
public gardens and promenades, where every citizen can wander, 
or can sit and rejoice with his family and his friends. All round 
their towns, in general, you find these ample public walks and 
promenades planted with trees and furnished with seats. The 
old walls and ramparts, which formerly gave security to the in- 
habitants, are now converted into sources of their highest pleasures, 
being thus planted and seated, and made scenes of the gayest 
resort, and whence the finest views are obtained over the surround- 
ing country. The suburbs and neighbourhood of all large cities 
again, are full of public gardens ; with alleys, and extensive wood- 
land walks, where the people all summer flock out, and find 
refreshments at coffee-houses, and bands of music, presided over 
by the first masters in Germany. The cities being seldom very 
large, the people thus enjoy a sort of half city, half rural life, but 
"refined and beautified with social and artistical influences, of which 
ours is too much stripped. In England, every man takes care of 
himself, and makes his own nest sung; besides lighting and 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 79 

paving, little seems done for the public in our towns. Here, on 
the contrary, the public enjoyment seems to be the favourite and 
prevailing idea, and you see around you perpetual evidences of its 
working. The people have in the outskirts of their cities, their 
vineyards and their summer-houses in them, where they can go 
with their families and friends. But they have, again, their great 
public gardens and woodlands all round their large towns,, to ten 
or a dozen miles' distance. They have similar places of more 
rustic resort, often on the most beautiful mountain heights and in 
mountain valleys, to which they pour out on all Sundays and 
leisure days, in carriages and by railroads, by thousands. Here 
they have wine, and curds, and often dinners. Here they even 
come with their families, taking whole troops of children with them ; 
and there you find them in old orchards, amid castle ruins, under 
the trees, and, in short, through all the surrounding hills and 
valleys. They dine in great family groups — the men sitting often 
in their shirt sleeves; the children rolling in the grass; and the 
landlords hurrying about, dealing out plates and viands to hungry 
people, in a broil of what seems hopeless hurry. They afterwards 
smoke their pipes, drink their coffee, and go home at an early 
hour as happy as this earth can make them. 

In every country town and village it is the same. You can go 
into few or none of the former, where you will not find public 
walks and gardens ; and will not hear of charming places, some' 
four, six, or ten miles distant, where all the world goes in the 
summer, in parties, to walk about, to drink coffee, to pic-nic in 
the woods, and so on. There is not a country inn in a pleasant 
place, but it has its orchard and its garden fitted up with seats and 
tables for this simple, rural festivity. There is not a ruin of a 
castle, or old j'ager-house, where you do not find walks and seats, 
and every provision for popular enjoyment. Everywhere the 
Germans have seized on all those picturesque points and scenes 
of rural beauty which afford means of carrying out and cultivating 
this mingled love of nature and of social pleasure. You come 
upon seats in wild spots, where you would otherwise never have 
dreamed of many besides yourself coming, and there you are sure 
to find that before you lies a beautiful view. 

All royal gardens too are open, and the people walk in them, 



80 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

and stream round the palaces, passing, in many instances through 
their very courts and gateways, just as if they were their own. 
Nay, the royal and ducal owners walk about amongst the people 
with as little ceremony as any of the rest. The Emperor of 
Austria, or the King of Prussia, does the very same. You may 
meet them anywhere; and little more ceremony is used towards 
N them than is used towards any other individual, simply that of 
lifting your hat in passing, which is done to all your acquaintance, 
and is returned as a mark of ordinary salutation. You will see 
princes sitting in public places with their friends, with a cup of 
coffee, as unassumingly and as little stared at as any respectable 
citizen. You may sometimes see a Grand Duke come into a country 
inn, call for his glass of ale, drink it, pay for it, and go away 
as unceremoniously as yourself. The consequence of this easy 
familiarity is, that princes are everywhere popular, and the daily 
occurrence of their presence amongst the people prevents that 
absurd crush and stare at them, which prevails in more luxurious 
and exclusive countries. 

The same open and general enjoyment of scenery extends to 
all other estates and gardens. The country houses of the nobility 
and gentry are surrounded on all sides with public and private 
walks. They have seldom any fences about anything but their 
private gardens. The people go and walk everywhere, and never 
dream of trespassing, nor are ever told of such a thing. This is 
one of the great charms of this country. All woods, with the rare 
exception of a deer park, are thus entirely open and unfenced. 
You wander where you will, with the most perfect feeling of giving 
no offence. Here are no warning-boards, no threats of steel-traps 
or spring-guns. A wisp of straw stuck on a pole, the usual sign 
in Germany of warning, in vintage time gives you notice that a 
private walk, which all the rest of the year is open, is then closed ; 
or a wisp hung on the bough of a tree in the forest, tells you that 
the common people are not to cut boughs there, or that young 
trees are planted, and you are not to tread them down. Everywhere 
else, you go where you please, through woods, valleys, meadows, 
gardens, or fields; and while property is sacred to the possessor, 
nature is, as it should be, unrestrictedly yours, and every man's. 
Iu this blessed freedom, ami with this simple and thorough 



OF THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. 81 

line of nature and of society, there is no country in the world 
where social and summer life are more enjoyed than in Germany. 
You are perpetually invited to join a party to a wood-stroll, to go 
to some lovely village in the hills or the forest, or to some old farm- 
house, where you get milk and coffee, and take bread with you 
perhaps ; where you find a Tanz-boden, or shed, where the young 
people can have a dance ; where the old sit, and look on, and 
smoke, and talk, and knit. Or to some old mill, where you have 
the same accommodations; or to some inn, on an eminence 'over- 
looking a splendid country, as that of the Rhine or Danube, and 
where on the terrace, the whole company will play at those simple 
games so much liked in Germany, as the black man, the blind cow, 
and others ; where all, high and low, old and young, run and laugh, 
and are as merry as so many boys and girls. f 

But it is in the capitals that this social out-of-door life^is 
carried to the greatest extent, as well as to the highest pitch of per- 
fection. The most celebrated bands, band-masters, and musical 
composers of Germany, are in daily requisition to give the highest 
impetus and enchantment to the popular enjoyment. Extensive 
gardens stretch on all hands, where cassinos rear their heads, 
crescents and colonnades extend themselves, groves and bowery 
walks with numberless seats offer their friendly shade, fountains 
splash and sparkle with a graceful and soothing witchcraft, or- 
chestras in the shape of open pillared temples stand aloft for the 
accommodation of musical bands, and throngs of the gayest people 
of the place make all lively, varied, and unceasingly attractive. 
At Munich, the English Garden, Tivoli, etc.; at Dresden, the 
Grosse Garten, the Linkische Bad; at Berlin, the Thier-Garten, 
the Winter-Garten, and all the neighbouring resorts of Charlotten- 
burg, of San Souci, of the Pfauen Insel, etc.; at Prague, the 
Baumgarten, the Feen and Farber Insel ; at Vienna, the Volks- 
Garten, in the very heart of the Vorstadt, and in front of the 
imperial palace itself; the Prater, the Augarten, etc., with all the 
beautiful resorts of Schbnbrunn, Hitzing, the mountain paradises 
of Baden, the Briihl, etc. etc. ; where Strauss and Lanner, and other 
leaders, are perpetually performing with their bands during the 
summer evenings to eager thousands — bear testimony to the univer- 
sality of this joyous and social out-of-door existence. v 



82 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE 

Vienna is the capital not merely of Austria but of German gaiety. 
Every day, instead of announcements of auctions and sermons, its 
walls are plastered with those of concerts, balls, soirees, music 
vereins, operas, plays, and Belustigungen or pleasure-meetings 
of a hundred descriptions; mingled with pilgrimages to celebrated 
shrines — things not less picturesque and amusing, and often not 
less gay and festive. Every day the lover of pleasure, and the 
student of human nature and its vagaries, finds himself not at a loss 
for employment, but distracted with a host of advertisements of 
the most bewitching spectacles and entertainments. Here is 
Strauss, there Lanner; here is Staudigl, there Lutzer; here is a ball 
at Sperls or Zum Zeisig; the Prater is to be magnificent with fire- 
works and Volks-freude ; the roundabouts will all be in full action; 
the entertainment at the Lust-baus most alluring, the stream of 
carriages and fashionable people on the drives most splendid. Go 
where you will, you will find thousands and tens of thousands 
seated in the gardens, netting, knitting, talking, listening to the 
musical bands, parading in the circle round the orchestra, drinking 
coffee or sugar- water, eating confections and ices in the cassino. 
The Folks theatre will call you one way with its drolleries, the 
opera another; and at Sperls, or the fashionable Dommayer's at 
Hitzing, you will find the dance going on in the saloon, and the 
same crowd of family or friendly parties, seated in the area under 
the trees which are all hung with lamps, supping and knitting, 
giving at the same time one eye to the dance in the saloon, and 
one ear to the music in the orchestra. 

There are no people on the face of the earth that all summer 
long enjoy themselves like the Germans in their gay capitals; but 
autumn approaches, and the great climacteric of the year is reached. 
The whole nation is astir. Not a man or woman can rest long. 
Every one must fly in quest of change, and pleasure, and health. 
The whole population is like one huge hive of bees at the point of 
swarming, there is one vast motion, buzz, and hum. Every soul 
must have his Hcrbst-reise, his autumn tour. He must visit the 
watering-places, and drink, and bathe. He must traverse the 
Rhine, the Elbe, or the Danube. He must climb the mountains 
of Switzerland, or the Tyrol. Steamers are everywhere loaded to 
sinking; inns are lull to suffocation; and landlords stand shaking 



OF THE PEOPLE IX GENERAL. 83 

their heads, gabbling German, French, English, Italian, and 
Russian, and bowing away disconsolate travellers and dusty car- 
riages from their doors. Railway trains are enormous in length; 
and a smoking and a talking are going on in them, that are 
astounding to the stranger. Baden, Baden-Baden, Wisbaden, all 
the Badens; Schlangen-Bad, Carlsbad, Wildbad, Alexisbad, all 
the Bads ; Ems, Ischl, Bad-Gastein, — every watering-place is full. 
Meeting in the early morning, and drinking of the sulphurous or 
effervescing water in the Kursaal, or holding a five-o'clock gossip 
in the warm general baths, men and women together; plunging 
into hot or cold baths in private; making drives to the neighbour- 
ing castles and scenery; sitting for two hours at tables d'hote; 
purchasing of nosegays and paying musicians; the parade, the 
splendid conversation-house, the ball, the reunion, the gambling 
in an evening, — and thus it goes at 'the watering-places. 

But every spot of the country' which is attractive; every moun- 
tain district, every gay town, every fine stream, is alive with the 
ever-moving throng of pleasure-tourists. The heights and castles 
of the Rhine and Danube ; the vales and defiles of the Saxon Swit- 
zerland; the romantic regions of the Saltzburg, the Noric and 
the Swabian Alps, the Eranconian and Thuringian forests, in short, 
every spot of gaiety or beauty receives the temporary hosts of these 
wanderers. 

The Germans travel comparatively little abroad. Some go to 
Rome, some to Paris, a very few to England; but through their 
own Fatherland they* circulate like the life-blood in the living- 
system, and as their enormous stretches of railway are completed, 
will do so more and more. And in truth, I can say from expe- 
rience, that a more delightful mode of spending an autumn is to 
be found in no country. Everywhere you meet with most kind 
and agreeable people, seeking pleasure, and willing to be pleased ; 
both of your own countrymen and of others; Poles, Danes, Swedes, 
and Russians, as well as Germans. You meet and part, and meet 
again. Enjoy a few chatty and busy days in visiting galleries of 
art, public works, and picturesque scenery ; in comparing tastes 
and experiences; are perpetually advancing through the enchanting- 
mountain regions, or sailing along rivers presenting the most varied 
and noble views of cities, scattered cottages, busy country people 



84 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

in amusing costumes, of mountain heights and solemn woods. 
Now you are standing before the finest paintings and statuary, 
ancient and modern, quaint and noble; now you are rapt in the 
music, and the scenic fairyland, of theatric and operatic art; the 
hum, and stir, and warmth of city life is around you, — and again 
you are buried in deep forests, or seated in some elfin glen, the 
green clear water rushing and murmuring below, and the tall pines 
and splintered crags of near and of distant heights soaring high 
above you; or are half-standing, half-seated on some stone on the 
mountain side, gazing over a far and sun-bright landscape, with 
its hundred smoking towns, and its hill-tops glittering in the blaze 
of noon, amid the blue and hazy distance. The world lies stretched 
in vastness before you or below at your feet, like a beautiful dream; 
and yet after you pass away from it, and winter closes upon your 
home, you shall find that this sunny dream does not fade, but that 
you have laid up a life-long store of rich remembrances; have 
widened the field of your vision ; and spread around, regions of 
beauty through all the space of your inward world, that neither 
winter can reach, nor night darken, nor time snatch again from 
your knowledge and enjoyment. 








OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE CONTINUED. — FESTIVE 
PROCESSIONS, ETC. 



v_y 



After all, trie most picturesque portion of the out-of-door life of 
the Germans consists in those processions and usages which belong 
to the Catholic church. In the Catholic parts of Germany these 
still remain in their full glory; and in the other parts, where the 
Reformed religion has asserted a co-partnership in the public mind 
in those fragments of such usages as still survive, and must survive 
in a populace; a great mass of which, frequently one half, frequently 
more, still are of the old faith. In the Catholic districts, carnival 
is still celebrated as in Italy, during the three days in February 
ending with Ash-Wednesday, though not with the same native 
gusto and spirit as amongst the Italians. The next approach to 
this is in Catholic Cologne, and in Mayence, with which Mannheim, 
Worms, and other Rhine cities, have sometimes attempted to vie. 
In Cologne in particular the people give themselves up to it heart 
and soul. They have their public processions, generally intended 
to satirize some public or private occurrence of the day, or to 
amuse the people with grotesque representations of historic scenes 
and personages. Others, again, are got up to recal the romantic 
ages in all their splendour. In 1841, Mannheim got up a pro- 



86 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE, 

cession of this kind, intended to rival the most magnificent ones of 
Cologne. It was the entrance of a Princess of England as the 
imperial bride, the Emperor of Germany and a great number of 
princes being assembled to receive her. There were electors, 
princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, bishops and knights, 
in great numbers; all on horseback, in the most gorgeous chivalric 
costume and array. There was the travelling kitchen, the travelling 
apothecary with his shop, belonging to the imperial train. There 
was old Father Rhine, Michael Scott the necromancer, Saracens, 
and heaven knows what. All was conceived and executed with the 
most correct historic or poetic propriety, and formed a most splendid 
spectacle as it paraded the streets. Those, however, who were 
accustomed to the carnival of Italy, or even of Cologne, complained 
that it was too silent and pantomimic. That it wanted all the 
attractions of masking figures, and witty encounters in the streets. 
These are to be found in Cologne. 

Here, immediately after New-Year's day, committees are formed, 
who make it their business to strike out and prepare costumes, 
characters, witticisms, etc. in readiness for the Carnival, or Fasching 
as it is called in Germany. The Fasching committees meet in 
general assembly once a week, in a hall fitted up for the purpose 
with raised platforms and rostra for orators. This is called the 
great council, and is presided over by a select council and a presi- 
dent. Here, in sittings of from two to three hours in length, they 
appear in hundreds in their costumes and in many-coloured caps. 
Here are proposed such plans as have been laid before the different 
committees; and orators, generally clad in old Roman costume, 
address them from the rostra in advocacy or rejection of these pro- 
posals. Then commence warm and often humorous debates, and 
resolutions are adopted amid the loudest outcries and clamours of 
applause or disapproval, attended with the playing of flourishes and 
marches by a numerous orchestra. 

These assemblies, as the carnival approaches, are held still 
oftener. They are opened with the general singing of some patriotic 
song, and the three days of the public carnival make but a small 
portion of the real one, which is going on almost daily before the 
arrival of the public exhibition. This year the last General Assembh 
was held on the Sunday evening, and was remarkable lor the 



FESTIVE PROCESSIONS, ETC. 87 

number of distinguished persons that were present, amongst whom 
were two princes of the royal house of Prussia, and many high 
officers of the province; and the president lamented, in name of the 
select council, that the British parliament had not, out of brotherly 
regard, so arranged its own opening as to have allowed their beloved 
monarch also to be present on his return home. 

A writer in the daily papers describing this, luxuriates in his 
reminiscences of the inexhaustible humours of Cologne, which, he 
says, fling forth a whole deluge of faschings literature, countless 
new songs, new speeches, new drolleries and squibs, comedies and 
allegories; hundreds of private representations of portions of the 
great show and processions, and others in connexion with it, and 
lively descriptions of these in prose and verse. In fact, during 
this period, all the world, both in Cologne and in other Rhine 
towns, is carnival mad. Every man turns author, poet, satirist, 
actor, mimic, mock-hero, and what not. Everybody is writing 
and printing songs, speeches, dramatic sketches, comic and serious; 
musical compositions, farces, squibs, fly about in all directions, 
thick as the falling leaves of autumn. 

The great points of splendour in the carnival are the procession 
and the mask-ball. The latter, at Cologne, being held in the great 
gothic hall of the Kauffhaus, highly adorned for the occasion. 
This year the twofold train of the procession represented in part 
the Olympic Games, the rest a procession from the mythologic 
underworld, mixed with characters from the Inferno of Dante. 
The infernal train burst forth to the day in the Neumarkte, 
suggested by an interesting elopement story. The god of all jolly 
fellows led the train in his chariot of victory, his rescued bride 
Phantasia, sitting near him. Dante, his adjutant, rode by the side 
of the chariot; while Klunzel, an entirely modern allegorical figure, 
was dragged reluctantly behind the chariot, lashed by the Furies. 
Then came the dethroned Pluto and Proserpina, with their three- 
headed dog Cerberus. Besides all the mythologic and legendary 
figures, Mars, Venus, Charon, Faust, Don Juan, Mephistopheles, 
etc., were numbers of parodies and caricatures; amongst them a 
Dutchman, who, in punishment of his sins against his German 
grandmother, was condemned to eat lump-sugar for his daily food ; 
while over his head, as a sword of Damocles, hung a monstrous 



88 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

beet-root, labelled " lumps by the entrance ten dollars;" alluding, 
no doubt, to attempts of the Dutch to levy heavy import duties 
on sugar by the Rhine, and intimating by the great beet-root, that 
this might be carried too far; and the Germans having to depend 
on the beet-root for all their sugar, as they now do for much, the 
Dutch would thus bring the beet-root on their own heads. The 
word lump too, which means not only a lump in German, but also a 
rag, and ragamuffin, as well as the word Eingang, meaning import 
as well as entrance, no doubt presented many witty ideas to the 
spectators. In fact, there are to Germans a whole host of puns and 
allusions connected with this allegory that are lost to foreigners. 

Sysiphus came next, with his enormous stone, and offered to 
teach the people of Mayence the mode of rolling it, while they, on 
their part, regretted that they could not have the pleasure of using 
it as they would. — An allusion to the fierce contest, which in the 
former winter had been going on between the Mayence people and 
they of Biberich, who are very jealous of one another; the Biberich 
people wishing to draw from Mayence part of its Rhine navigation, 
in consequence of which the Mayence people in one night had 
conveyed three hundred boat-loads of stones, and dropping them 
into the water before Biberich, had thus cut off its harbour, but 
had been compelled by the German Confederation to fish them all 
up again. Next came a censor of the press, very busy in making 
waste paper, in allusion to the new Prussian censorship, from 
which so much had been expected, and which proved a mere piece 
of political hocus-pocus. Another figure was labelled Dante's 
Divina Commedia, a similar allusion to restrictions on the intro- 
duction of religious matters into comedy. 

These, and other such things, shew the nature of the Cologne 
carnival. It is a sort of Saturnalia, in which the people take the 
opportunity to give a loose to their pent-up feelings on political 
subjects; and where they dare not venture in sober earnest to attack 
the acts of government, to make it obvious by the means of carnival 
license and ridicule, that they arc neither unnoticed nor approved. 
More local and private matters also burst out in satirical shapes 
and sallies; and Hans Wurst, the jack-pudding of Germany, plays 
off his fooleries, and foolscaps and bells abound at all corners. 

Everywhere, amongst Protestants as well as Catholics, all over 



ETC. 



89 



Germany, mask-balls, public and private, are given; but in most 
places, every year you hear increasing lamentations that the old 
simple freedom and hearty pleasures of the Fasching are giving way 
before the spreading notions of gentility and refinement. In 
Munich this year, a writer says, " Formerly, in Munich, prevailed 
an uncircumscribed south-German life: Munich and Vienna went 
the same way. Whatever was the mode in the imperial city, 
became so in Munich. Pleasures, dress, actors, all came from 
Vienna, and the people learned thence to address one another as 
Herr von So-and-so, and Frau von So-and-so, a custom which yet 
gives such an air of genteel dignity in the eyes of strangers. But 
in all else has grown up a wonderful change. The increasing 
importance of the city, the more intimate connexions with the rest 
of Germany, the flourishing of the arts, and the resort of so many 
strangers there, have introduced a new element of life, which, 
attacking that old south-German spirit on all sides, has driven it 
pretty nearly out of the field. 

" Before this became the case, the tone of large companies was 
easy, free, and familiar. Every one was suffered to feel himself of 
some account in them; every one felt glad to be spoken to by 
another, though he had never seen him before; instead of making 
himself exclusive, every one was disposed to make advances. 
People were on this account more pleased to be amongst strangers, 
because all was put on a very household footing. It was good 
gossiping with the old fathers, and the worthy venerable mothers. 
The young ladies were easly satisfied with the harmless chit-chat 
which the young gentlemen engaged in with them in the homely 
high German of Munich. But now people draw into narrower 
circles; they become more select, more exclusive; society assumes a 
finer tone, address clears itself of its negligence. Those of maturer 
years, whom you are able to approach, are become more modish; 
the young people, in their external demeanour, elegant; the young 
ladies more chary. The great world begins to grow cold, and 
people speak more and more of family life; friends and relations 
draw together into household circles, make unions for the winter 
entertainments, and give select home balls and concerts. Even the 
pic-nics, which become more frequent than ever, display the same 
tendency; people rejoice themselves in the illusion of being in a 
family circle. 



90 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE, 

"In close connexion with this state of things is the growth of 
tea-drinking. Numbers have already freed themselves from the 
evening bumper, and numbers more threaten to do it; to such a 
degree that the first journal of polite literature, which after an 
absence of many years, was lately brought out here, held it in 
contemplation whether it should not style itself f The Munich 
Tea-leaves/ While breweries are rising on all hands to furnish 
Bavarian beer to every quarter of the world, here, at the fountain- 
head, young gentlemen are quenching their thirst with water and 
milk; and ladies who formerly ordered a good cordial night-cap at 
least from the doctor, now blush lest they should be thought to 
sip a little in secret. Truly there are yet jolly fellows, who at the 
evening Wirthshaus table sing boisterous student- songs, and war- 
songs from Kbrner, talk loud and vehemently, and send over their 
heads clouds of smoke and fumes of beer, while they whisper to 
one another how drearily the fine tea-drinking folk drag through 
the winter, and how glad they are at the first burst of fine weather 
to fly off to the Alpine regions that shew themselves so temptingly 
in the distance, and where a gay life still maintains itself with 
sound of guitar and Alpine song, the report of rifles, and jubilee of 
kirchweighs, which may almost be heard in the streets of our city. 

" But we don't merely drink tea and grow exclusive, we are full 
of interest for the new literature. We talk of art and science. The 
English language is everywhere studied, even more than the French. 
An English leaven, diffused through south Germany, has reached 
us; and works daily, growingly, mightily, more and more. It has 
siezed on our old habits by the very throat, threatens to annihilate 
them, and parades boldly before us, with high pretensions of style 
and refined accomplishments. The leaven works, not merely 
upwards, but down into the lower grades. It has seized on the 
burgher class. Those practices which a while ago were regarded as 
the privileges of a high sphere, arc now pronounced to be indis- 
pensable to all. The burgher ladies take off the Riegelhauben (the 
pretty little caps of gold or silver tissue, worn only on the back of 
the head so becomingly, and which are peculiar to Munich), and 
put on silk bonnets. They subscribe to the circulating library. 
and engage a box at the theatre. The daughters speak written 
German; they go no longer with the distaff into the lloimgarten. 



FESTIVE PROCESSIONS, ETC. 91 

but make formal visits, in order to speak to one another in French. 
So far as the increase of intellectuality and intelligence go 'tis well, 
but 'tis not so well to see the old cordial jollity of the carnival 
turned into a stately frost; and instead of the good old German 
dancing, laughing, bandying of wits and humours, during which 
many a love-sign snugly passed, many an explanation found happy 
opportunity, and many a half-understood case a prosperous issue; 
a mere walking in crowds through gilded rooms takes its place, with 
stately salutations and gentility without heartiness." 

These complaints of the change of manners are not peculiar to 
Munich, nor to carnival time; but these matters belong rather to 
our notices of social life. We will leave them for the present. 

Besides the Fasching, there are many customs, here and there 
remnants of old religious festivities, which make part of the out-of- 
door life of Germany, and in which the children often bear a con- 
spicuous part. At Fastnacht, or carnival, they make what they 
call Fassen-bretzel, or Fasching-pratzel. It is like a serpent with 
two heads rolled into a circle; which is eaten in families during 
that time, and is a sort of unleavened bread. In most parts of 
Germany the children go round and sing before the houses an old 
song on this day, wishing the master a golden table, on which 
stands in the middle a can of wine, and at every corner baked fish, 
and a wagon to ride to heaven in ; to the mistress a golden cradle, 
and a golden band for the child; and to the daughters good 
husbands. There are various versions of these old songs, all very 
rude, and all having the golden table and the baked fish. In one 
stanza they are very elegant and poetical: 

We write on a lily-leaf, and say, 
We wish the master a very good day. 

On the Rhine the children on this day go about with a cock 
tied in a basket. They swing it about and sing — 

Havele, havele Hahne, 
Fastnight doth wane-a; 
Up there on the henroost-stang, 
Baskets full of eggs do hang; 
To the roof-tree clinrring:, 
Sausages are swinging; 
Give us the long ones, 
Keep the little wrong ones ; 



92 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

Tra, ri, ro, 
The winter now must go. 
What will you now be giving? 
Happy be your living. 
Luck enter your door, 
And come out never more. 

In Halstein they go from house to house with a dead fox in a 
basket, and sing — 

Jack Fox is his name; 
Roguery his fame; 

What he knows not that learns he fleetly; 
House and yard cleans he out neatly ; 
Both bread and bacon 
They will be taken ; 
Eggs from the nest — 
He who gives me, him I call best. 
As I here aforetime was, 
Found I nought but leaves and grass; 
Here found we no wealthy man, 
To fill our purse, as now you can. 
With a shilling, with three, four, or so, 
Or with a halfcrown-piece, you know. 

On Summer-day, as they call it, which falls in March, on 
Latere Sunday, for they make very little mention of spring, but 
talk, as soon as winter is over, of summer coming; they make a 
bretzel of a different kind and shape, which they call Sumroer- 
bretzel. This the children in the Palatinate carry about on wands 
adorned with ribbons, through the streets, and sing the summer 
in with a song, which bears a striking resemblance to the oldest 
song in the English language, beginning 

Ye somer ist yeomen in, 
Loud sing cuckoo, etc. 

and which, no doubt, was brought in by the Saxons, and thus 
sung in England by their children, as at this time in Germany is 
still sung this 

SUMMER-DAY'S SONG. 

Tra, ri, ro, Tra, ri, ro, 

The Summer comes once mo ! The summer comes once mo ! 

We'll to the garden hie us, We'll, behind the hedges creeping, 

And watch there till he conies by us. Wake the summer from his Bleeping. 

Yo, yo, yii ! Yo, yo, yo ' 

The summer conies once mo ! The summer conies once mo ! 



FESTIVE PROCESSIONS, ETC. 



Tra, rij ro, 
The summer comes once mo ! 
The summer! the summer! 
The winter's now the roamer. 

Yo, yo, yo ! 
The summer comes once mo ! 

Tra, ri, ro, 
The summer comes once mo ! 
To beer, boys ! to beer ! 
The winter lies in bands, O ! 
And he who wont come here, 
We'll trounce him with our wands, O ! 

Yo, yo, yo ! 
The summer comes once mo ! 



Tra, ri, ro, 

The summer comes once mo ! 
To wine, boys! to wine ! 
All in my mother's cellar 
Lies famous muscateller. 

Yo, yo, yo ! 
The summer comes once mo ! 

Tra, ri, ro, 
The summer comes once mo ! 
A golden table the master we wish, 
At every corner a baked fish ; 
And midst to see 
Of wine, cans full three, 
That he therewith may jocund be ! 

Yo, yo, yo ! 
The summer comes once mo ! 



In other places they give the following variation of this song, 
and rather in a recitative than singing : 



Strih, strah, stroh, 
Summer-day comes once mo ! 
Violets and sweet flowers 
They bring us summer hours. 
We hear the keys a-ringing, 
Something for us they're bringing ; 
Bretzel steeping in red wine, 
And for us all dainties fine. 



A golden table the master we wish, 
With plenty thereon of baked fish. 
We wish the mistress, since she's so kind, 
With linen her presses all deeply lined. 
The daughter we wish a husband good, 
Who'll hold her as dear as his life's blood. 

Strih, strah, stroh, 
This day next year we are here once mo ! 



On Summer-day, also, two men go round; one dressed in moss 
and straw, as Winter, and the other in ivy or other evergreen 
leaves, hung with garlands and ribbons, like our Jack-in-the-Green; 
or rather, they go round in a sort of covering of this, out of which 
they can creep at pleasure, and in this form they beg from house 
to house. 

Before Easter the market appears full of coloured eggs, such as 
we call Pasch-eggs, and which are common in some parts of 
England at the same season. Here, however, they have a practice 
with them very different to anything of ours. They lay these eggs 
and little loaves of confection about in the garden on Easter-day in 
the grass and bushes, and tell the children that on this night the 
hares have laid eggs, and bid them go out and look for them. 
This is one of their most favourite fictions. The father, mother, 
and all the elder brothers and sisters make as much pretence about 



94 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



these hares' eggs and sugar-hares as about their Christmas Christ- 
child and his gifts, aud go out and rejoice themselves in the surprise 
of the children as they discover these many-coloured eggs, as much 
as the children themselves. Of the popularity of this fiction you 
see plenty of evidence in their literature. 

At Kreutznach and other cities on the Rhine, on St. John's 
day in June, the Brunnens are cleaned out, and new brunnen- 
masters are chosen; on which occasion the neighbours assemble 
and make a little feast. On the day of this feast, the children go 
round through the neighbourhood to collect eggs, which they lay 
upon green leaves, in a basket adorned with field- flowers; and at 
evening roast their eggs, and make a feast. As they go from 
house to house they sing the following very rude and unrhymeable 
song: — - 

Garden, garden, Brunnen egg 
For St. John's day to-day we beg. 
Green are the lilies all; 
On the housewife now we call. 
Out upon the roof so high, 
The basket full of eggs we spy. 
If they are broken, 
Give me your daughter. 
Are they too small? 
Give me two for one. 
Strih, strah, stroh, 
This day year we'll all come again once mo'! 

There are also other similar customs and son^s: but as some of 
these are rather connected with the seasons than with religious 
festivals, with the religion of nature than of churches, we will here 
throw them into a little chapter of themselves, though at the risk 
of extending somewhat too far this part of our volume. 







•s. r 
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i m WMM 



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©hap Tries ^ooo. 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE CONTINUED. — SYMPTOMS AND AMENITIES 

OE SPRING. 



We have described the festivities of Christmas and New- Year's 
day — of harvest and vintage time; but the bursting out of spring 
itself is a festivity. It is a joy which fills every heart, old and 
young; and every mark of it is hailed with most eager and 
sympathetic exultation. The first of these glad manifestations is 
the breaking-up of the ice in the rivers. It is this which brings 
you from the long and gloomy severity of winter at one stride into 
the living animation of coming spring, and is a striking scene. 

When a thaw comes, after a long frost on the large rivers, the 
boatmen are on the watch for its suddenly breaking up. For days 
it will be all still, and as if apparently it would last for ever; but 
the practical eye of the waterman knows when it will suddenly take 
its departure. "The ice will go to-night," they say; for it is a 



9G OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

very singular fact, that it almost invariably goes in the night, and 
generally about twelve o'clock. It is said that by referring to the 
files of newspapers where the breaking-up of the ice is each year 
recorded, it is found that regularly in twenty times it breaks up in 
the Rhine nineteen of them in the night. 

The boatmen on the Neckar, after the severe frost of 1840, 
accordingly one night, when the thaw had continued some days, 
said — " It will go to-night." To our eyes there appeared no 
more likelihood than there had done on the first day of the thaw. 
All was one hard surface of ice. No water had flowed over it; and 
one could at sunset have ventured to walk across it. But when 
it became dark, torches were seen flaring here and there along the 
banks of the Neckar, especially by the city, where the houses and 
mills might be endangered by a sudden breaking loose, and as 
sudden rising of the flood; for the Neckar lying in a deep valley, 
and running for forty or fifty miles along it, with a high and 
mountainous country on each side, rises rapidly sometimes after 
heavy rains, or a deep snow followed by a rapid thaw, to thirty or 
forty feet; and marks may be seen in many places on the houses 
shewing the height to which it rose in certain years. The highest 
of these is one accompanying the breaking-up of the ice in 1784, 
and is on the second story of the houses, about twenty feet above 
the road, which road is as high again above the ordinary level of 
the river. 

When one of these sudden floods accompanies the breaking- 
up of an ice of perhaps two feet thick, the spectacle is perfectly 
sublime. The solid mass heaved by the water, which is driven like 
a mighty wedge beneath, rifts and explodes as with the reports of 
cannon. The huge masses of ice are tossed up by the torrents 
that rush from beneath them, and rearing their sharp crystallized 
edges against each other, grind and roar, like lions in combat with 
tigers. The whole scene that a few minutes before was silent and 
motionless becomes one chaos of confusion, uproar, the crushing of 
conflicting, and grinding of furious and vast sheets of ice against 
each other. There is a rush and sough of waters all in activity. 
It is as if they had sprung at once from a long sleep, and awoke 
not only with their old voice, but with a hubbub of strange sounds 
both from their own bed and from men on the banks. 



SYMPTOMS A.ND AMENITIES OF STRING. 97 

As these tremendous blocks of ice are thus rushing down the 
river, and many of them are carried out by their own mutual 
violence upon the banks, they would, if not guarded against, do 
infinite damage, crushing boats, smashing mill-works, and tearing 
away every thing that obstructed them. A constant and anxious 
watch becomes necessary. A man from each village or town is 
ready at the first glimpse of its breaking up, to ride to the next 
place, giving the alarm as he goes, by crying aloud " The ice goes ! 
The ice goes!" The people all flock to the river-side; guns are 
fired, and torches appear in every direction. The boatmen get their 
vessels which happen to have been frozen up, dragged out of the 
waters; and along the streets of towns, men and boys in crowds 
stand with poles, ready to push away the blocks that threaten 
damage; and if the waters appear likely to rise rapidly, to be in 
readiness, many of them to get the goods out of their houses, into 
numbers of which it will flow. Imagine at the same moment this 
scene of excitement extending along the immense banks of the 
great rivers of Germany, and of their tributaries, and what an 
animated idea! 

On the night then on which the boatmen had prognosticated 
the going of the ice, we were actually awoke by the swift galloping 
past of a horse, and the loud cry of a man, "The ice goes! the ice 
goes ! " I leaped from my bed, struck a light, looked at my watch, 
and it was — just twelve ! Throwing open a window which faced 
the river, the scene was most strange and striking. An hour before, 
when I lay down, all was silent; now there came a wild and awful 
sound of contending elements through the darkness. Sounds of 
grinding, crushing, cracking — of rushing roaring waters, and the 
sweep of winds, bringing from above the heavy dull explosions of 
ice-masses. Along the banks flared hundreds of torches. The 
cries of human voices, those of men, women, and children, came on 
all sides. Guns were firing rapidly near the city. One could 
perceive through the darkness, white and spectral masses moving 
on the waters, and then the rending of fresh sheets away as those 
rushed against them. Below, from the bridge where the gigantic 
pieces were continually striking against the piers, came the dull 
and continued thunders of a distant battle. 

I hastily threw on my clothes and ran towards the city. A more 

H 



98 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

picturesque scene is not imaginable. People were hastening from 
all quarters to the river side. As I drew near the city, I met a 
good-natured student running to give us the intelligence. He was 
in his long dressing-gown and a red cap, and made many apologies 
for shewing himself in such dishabille. We turned down to the 
river bank, and proceeded under a wide-arched passage beneath a 
garden terrace. Before us flared a cresset fire, shewing the black- 
ened vaults and shadowy pillars around us. It was like the passage 
through some bandit's cave. At every opening on the river banks 
stood throngs with torches and poles and anxious looks. Women 
called out of windows, and others with their clothes thrown on in 
haste equal to my own, and with their cloaks or gown-skirts thrown 
over their heads, were hurrying here and there. All was life, 
wakefulness, and animation. We made our way to the bridge, 
where, though the ice, considering that it was two feet thick, was 
moving off in as orderly a style as could be expected, yet it presented 
a striking spectacle. By the light of their torches we could see it 
hurrying along in huge platforms of many yards square, which 
came ever and anon with such concussions against the strong stone 
bridge, that it trembled beneath us. The grinding and rustling 
sound, and the whiteness of the ice-masses, as they chafed against 
each other in going along, and raised round their edges a snowy 
ridge, had a singular effect; but the scenes and the groups around 
were not less striking. Under old dingy archways, at whose feet 
rushed the vexed waters, at every opening from the city to the 
stream, on the bridge and along the banks, were seen wild-looking 
throngs, made strikingly conspicuous by their torches. Above, by 
the collected glare of all the torches, might be dimly discerned the 
old dusky towers and gables of this picturesque town, and high 
around, the dim sides of the wooded mountains, silent and dusk. 
The ruins of the old castle too overlooked the busy river in majestic 
gloom and indifference, as if it felt that it had once had its times of 
stir and human excitement, but had long ago done with them, and 
had no more concern with man and the changes of the seasons, 
than to stand through all, a solemn monument of the past. 

The ice gone, how soon seems the season to advance. 1 low- 
soon arc all the active exertions which we have noticed, going on 
in fields and vineyards. How are all the people out, stirring heir 



SYMPTOMS AND AMENITIES OF SPRING. 99 

and there and everywhere, in fields, and woods, and gardens. 
How soon comes out the violet, the March violet as they call it, 
and for the first of which there is such an eager hunting, by bank 
and thicket; and how soon are these green, sunny, southern banks 
and fields scattered with the lovely blue of the squill, known only 
in our gardens. March is here ! and in wood and valley, what 
shoutings and singings and pipings are heard, as if Pan with his 
fawns and satyrs, with all their young hordes, were dancing and 
holding jubilee there. 

There are parties of boys, who have made themselves pipes and 
trumpets of bark, which the ascent of the sap enables them to strip 
from the trees. The principal tree which they strip for this 
purpose, is a species of elm. Before I saw this, I often wondered 
at the appearance of young elms in the woods near villages. They 
had often the bark wholly stripped from one side from to top to 
bottom, and I was inclined to imagine that they had been stripped 
by lightning, till I observed that it was so frequent, and always 
occurring to young trees of this species, though some of them 
were very tall, probably not less than forty feet high. When I met 
the youngsters with their horns and trumpets of this very bark, the 
mystery was explained. 

On a Sunday afternoon-stroll into the valley of the Fox-Mill, 
near Heidelberg, we met, as we ascended one side of the valley, 
a party of boys coming down the other, amusing themselves with 
these pipes, etc. When they saw that we took notice of them 
across the valley, they stopped, evidently to entertain us with their 
sylvan music. They made a wild kind of chorus; some on small 
and shrill, others on larger and fuller, pipes of green bark, and one 
boy with a horn of it about a yard long, made a bass variation of 
the drollest kind. It was sometimes like the braying of an ass, 
sometimes like the bellowing of a wild bison, and at others like the 
chuckling and merriment of some uncouth and Pan-like creature 
of the woods. It was so odd, that we could not, for our lives, 
help laughing outright, which then so delighted the young musi- 
cians that they sent back their laughter across the valley like an 
echo. It was altogether just as if we had met by accident a young 
troop of fawns and satyrs all in their woodland jollity. Sometimes 
they stopped their pipes, and sung out a song till the boy with the 

h2 



100 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

horn blew a queer and irresistible accompaniment, and they were 
forced to laugh aloud. As they proceeded, however, they, sung 
with more spirit and zeal, and we were soon astonished to hear 
them break out with an old tune, that Hauff says in Lichtenstein 
may be often heard on the banks of the Neckar, and in Hauff's 
own words. 

Scarcely thought ! But yet say — 

To its end, lo ! Joy was brought, AH earth's transports, what are they? 

Yesterday on proud steeds hieing, Pride ye on your beauty's blowing, 

Shot to-day the heart through; lying Cheeks with milk and purple glowing? 

In to-morrow's chilling grave! See! the roses wither all! 

Therefore still 
March I forth as God shall will, 
Hear I then the trumpets calling? 
Comes the moment of my falling? 
I will die a soldier brave. 

After this patriotic song, they burst out into as merry a one, 
unknown to us, and then to our equal surprise, into Uhland's 
" Wirthin's Daughter." We were not prepared to hear the songs 
of Hauff and Uhland sung in this wild woodland valley by this 
little troop of village boys, and the effect was thrilling. As wc 
remained some time talking of this, our little satyr-band went on, 
and we could long hear their alternate singing turned suddenly 
by a queer blast of the bark horn into a fresh peal of laughter, and 
then the shriller pipings of their lesser instruments growing fainter 
and fainter in the distance. 

In April what a paradise is around you ! The Germans, though 
their springs are not without their variations, have certainly, on 
the whole, much finer and steadier ones than ours. In April their 
abundance of fruit trees burst into blossom, and you see around 
you an ocean of bloom. Everywhere the snowy white of the plum 
blossom meets your eye, then succeeds the sweetest pink tints of 
the apple, and the delicate white of the pear. All around is the 
tenderest green of young leaves below, and sunshine above, play- 
ing far and wide over happy people. In May you feel it more of 
heaven than earth. The uightingales in thousands are singing in 
the thickets, the woods and the gardens, and you cannot avoid 
calling to mind the simple sentiment of the child in an old hymn. 



SYMPTOMS AND AMENITIES OF SPRING. 101 

As the moon doth shine so fair, 

And the nightingales do sing, 
How glad it must in heaven be, 

With Jesus our young king. 

The nights, indeed, are so mild and clear, that people sit out 
in the public gardens, drink coffee, and let their children play 
about till nine o' clock at niglit. The vines are in full blossom, and 
the whole air is suffused with their peculiar, delicious, and ethereal 
fragrance. In one place you see a group of children, with a s mall 
sort of cockchaffer on their fingers, which they are inciting to fly 
away by singing in their language exactly the same song as our 
children sing to the lady-cow in ours : 

LITTLE MAYCHAFFER SONG. 

Maychaffer, Maychaffer, fly thee away ! Little Turk, little Turk, fly thee away! 

Thy house it is burning ; The women will smash thee, 

Thy mother is mourning; With cudgels they '11 thrash thee — 

Thy father he sits on the sill — Turk-wife, Turk-wife, fly thee away ! 
Fly thee to heaven, or all will go ill. 

The men will pursue thee, 

And run their spears through thee. 

To heaven fly humming, 

Bring a sack full of cummin ; 

Then I'll dip my spicy bread 

In the cooling wine so red. 

As the month advances, out comes the lady-cow itself, which 
they sing to in the same way : 

Marybird ! come light thee down The spider spins them round, they die ; 

Upon my hand, upon my hand; Marybird — oh ! fly, now fly, 

I'll harm thee not, my beauty ! Thy children cry so sorely ! 

No harm, no pain shall come to thee, Marybird, so meek and mild, 

Thy lovely wings alone I'll see, Fly forth, fly to the neighbour's child, 

Thy lovely wings, my beauty! She'll harm thee not, my beauty ! 

Marybird, now fly away ! No harm, no hurt she'll do to thee, 

Thy house it burns, thy children cry, Thy lovely wings alone she'd see, 

So sorely, oh ! so sorely ! Thy lovely wings, my beauty ! 

In the villages tbe children are calling to the stork, to come 
and take possession of its ancient hereditary nest on the chimney 
or gable, or on the tower or gable of tbe church, where a frame of 
wood is often secured for its nest to lie upon, and which nest, 
made of sticks three or four feet in height and diameter, quite a 



102 



OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



little tower of itself, attracts your eye at a great distance. Many 
superstitions are connected with these birds. It is considered a 
sign of coming trouble or ruin, if the stork deserts its old station 
on the house. The children are told that the stork not only brings 
luck, but little brothers and sisters in its bill ready swaddled. Of 
the numerous children's stork songs, we may give this one : 

STORK SONG. 

What claps in the house so loud, hark ! hark ! 
I believe, I believe, it is the stork ! 

That was the stork; so children be still, 
And here what I now tell you will. 

He brought you a brother, and out is flown, 
But has bitten your mother to the bone. 

She lies now ill, but is full of joy, 

Nor heeds the pain for the love of the boy. 

The little brother so sweet and small, 

Has brought with him sugar-plums for you all. 

But never an one shall taste a sweet, 
That cannot be still and most discreet. 



K^\ 





OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE CONCLUDED. — PILGRIMAGES. 



How much do the follies and weaknesses of mankind contribute to 
give colour and variety to the surface of human life. What poetry 
fails to effect, superstition accomplishes. Out of ignorant credulity 
and childish conformity to the miserable schemes of priestcraft, 
spring everywhere the most curious practices and the most pic- 
turesque festivities. In Germany, what is so picturesque as its 
religious pilgrimages ? In the Catholic states there is scarcely a 
high hill in any pleasant country on which some cunning saint 
has not perched his shrine, to which thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of zealous votaries flock through the summer months. 
Everywhere you see little chapels standing aloft on the heights, 
which are celebrated as the goal of frequent Wallfahrten, or Pil- 
grimages. Everywhere there are what they call Calvarien Bergen, 



104 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

or Hills of Calvary, where the crucifixion is livelily represented, 
and where are pausing or resting-places in the ascent, where Christ 
is represented as resting from the burden of his cross, so that the 
people may fill themselves with a vivid idea of the whole scene; 
and others with shrines of Maria Hilf, or Mary the Helpful, and 
on such eminences stand her adored tabernacles. Along the 
high roads, besides the various crosses, great and small, are little 
shrines, many of them very like meat-safes, with their wire network 
before them, containing bloody and ghastly and chained saints and 
Saviours, so paltry and even hideous that one would imagine, so 
far from inspiring devotion, they would inspire horror and disgust. 
Everywhere, on saint -days, you see the people streaming from 
various dorfs to some one central point in showy and many-coloured 
processions. They are bound to that church or chapel in their 
particular neighbourhood which possesses the highest celebrity. 
There are boys in white gowns bearing crosses; there are little 
figures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the saint of the day, carried 
at different intervals in the procession, on frames of wood, all 
dressed and made gaudy with ribbons. There are banners borne, 
with holy pictures and emblems on them. A man goes before with 
his book, reading out the hymns for the occasion, and all the 
people follow in the train, singing. 

Nothing is so common the summer through as these holiday 
processions, and nothing gives such a lively variety to the face of 
the country. In the very regions of serfdom, where the Leibeigenen, 
literally Body -property, or bondsmen, till the soil, and the face of 
the earth has a dreary look, as if the habitation of slavery, on these 
days all is holiday and freedom. The peasantry are all abroad in 
their best ; as you pass through their villages they swarm in the 
street, preparing to hasten off to some pilgrimage church or other. 
Processions are forming; the villages are in a stir and throng of 
many-coloured dresses ; you meet streams of people for miles on 
the road ; you catch the sound of a choral song to the right or left 
over the great corn plains, and see trains of pilgrims in distant 
parts of the landscape. The bells of the village churches are ring- 
ing; heaven scuds down its gladdening sunshine over all, and in 
the momentary sabbath feeling of the scene you forget the slavery 
of body and of soul that is around you. 



PILGRIMAGES. 105 

But in the states in which Protestantism prevails to a certain 
extent, still prevail, too, these "Wallfahrten. They are not so 
frequent, but they are as eagerly undertaken; perhaps more eagerly 
because they occur more rarely. In every neighbourhood there is 
some renowned chapel where miracles are done, and wonderful help 
found; and at least once in the summer, to them press from far 
and near the most astounding throngs, doing acts of extraordinary 
penance even on the way. Poor weak creatures, that one would 
imagine could not crawl a mile, are wearily dragging along a score 
or more. Old people, whose only pilgrimage one would expect to 
be to the other world, are propped on crutch and staff, bending their 
slow course towards the great object of the day's worship. The 
blind are actually carrying the lame; and the way to the temple 
of Juggernaut can scarcely exhibit more pitiable scenes of mis- 
directed, yet unconquerable devotion, than do the roads towards 
these Catholic shrines. Nor in these Juggernautic expeditions 
are the attractions of youth and beauty neglected. Hundreds of 
village girls, adorned to the utmost, and prepared for weeks 
beforehand for the purpose, go singing along, often to some 
solitary chapel in some solitary forest, where encampments are 
formed, and a sort of grand festival held. The consequences to 
morals that these expeditions have occasioned may readily be 
imagined; and in some parts they have been so enormous as to 
occasion the governments to restrain and discountenance them as 
much as possible. Our present business, however, will be to give 
as graphic an idea as we can of the general character and proceed- 
ings of these pilgrimages, and leave the reader to philosophise on 
their results ; and we cannot, for this purpose, do better than pre- 
sent the living recital which Goethe has given of his falling in with 
the Pilgrimage of St. Rochus, at Bingen on the Rhine, in 1814. 

"Above Bingen, and near the river, stretches itself forward a 
hill, towards the upper tableland. It makes one think of the 
promontories of the old pent-up waters. At its east end you see a 
chapel dedicated to the holy Rochus, which is just restored from 
the destructive ravages of war. On one side yet stands the scaf- 
folding, notwithstanding which on the morrow the feast shall be 
celebrated. People think we are come hither on that account, and 
promise us enjoyment. We are told that during the war-time, to 



106 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

the great grief of the country, this house of God was desecrated 
and laid waste. Not, indeed, entirely out of caprice and wanton- 
ness, but because here an advantageous position overlooked the 
whole country, and commanded a part of it; and thus the building 
became ransacked of all the requisites and ornaments of divine 
service; became smoke-blackened and denied with bivouacs, yes, 
even degraded to a stable. 

" But on this account sank not faith in the saint who turns away 
the plague and contagious diseases from his votaries. Truly no 
Wallfahrt hither was to be thought of; for the enemy, circumspect 
and suspicious, forbade all pious processions hither and thither as 
dangerous assemblages, demanding fellowship of thought, and too 
favourable to conspiracies. For four-and-twenty years, therefore, 
could no feast be celebrated aloft there. Yet were the neighbour- 
ing believers, who had a deep conviction of the benefits of these 
local pilgrimages, driven, through the force of great necessity, to 
dare the utmost; and the people of Rudesheim relate the following 
remarkable instance of this. — Deep in a winter's night they beheld 
a torch-train, which all unexpectedly proceeding from Bingen, held 
its way up the hill, finally surrounded the chapel, and there, as 
may be supposed, completed its object of devotion. How far the 
French authorities indulged the importunity of these votaries is 
known to nobody, though it is scarcely to be supposed that such 
an undertaking could have been ventured on without some secret 
acquiescence of the kind; but the occurrence itself remained totally 
unnoticed by them. The people of Rudesheim, who at the sight 
ran to the banks of the river, declare that a more singular or awe- 
inspiring spectacle they never saw in their lives. 

" We descended gently the shore, and all that we met con- 
gratulated themselves on the restoration of the neighbouring holy 
place, since, although Bingen must especially desire this renovation 
and reaniination, yet was it also a pious and joyful occasion for the 
whole country, and on that account a general joy for the morrow; 
since the obstructed, interrupted, ay, often totally annihilated inter- 
course between the two Rhine banks, maintained alone through 
the faith in this saint, shall again with full lustre be restored. The 
whole country is in motion to discharge both its old and new vows. 
There will men confess their sins, receive pardon, and in the 



PILGRIMAGES. 10T 

swarming throng of the crowding strangers so many long separated 
friends will again meet each other. 

"Our return was enlivened by a continued firing of cannon from 
the chapel. This warlike clang gave occasion at the inn supper- 
table to speak of this high peak of St. Rochus as a military post. 
It was remarked that thence one sees the whole Rhinegau upwards, 
and can distinguish most of the places that we had visited in 
coming hither. At the same time we were called on to notice that 
from the height above Biberich we must have frequently seen the 
Rochus chapel as a white spot lit up with the morning sun; which 
we then very well recollected. From all which, it could not fail 
that St. Rochus should be regarded as a worthy object of venera- 
tion, since through this binding faith in him — thus in a moment 
was this post of war and contention converted into a post of peace 
and reconciliation. 

" In the meantime a stranger was found amongst us seated at 
table, who was regarded as a pilgrim, and on that account the 
praises of the saint were sung more freely. But to its great 
amazement the well - meaning company found that, though a 
Catholic, he was to a certain degree an opponent of the saint. 
On the 16th of August, the feast-day, while so many were cele- 
brating the holy Rochus, his house was burnt down. Another 
year, on the same day, his son was wounded; the third chance he 
would not explain. A sagacious guest remarked that, in individual 
cases, the fact was, the people must address themselves to that 
saint under whose particular jurisdiction it fell. To guard against 
fires St. Florian had in charge; St. Sebastian undertook the healing 
of wounds; and as to the third accident, one could not say, but 
probably St. Herbertus might have afforded help in it. For the 
rest, there was plenty of scope given to believers, since in the 
whole no less than fourteen holy helpers had been appointed. The 
virtues of these were now run over, and it was found that helpers 
in our needs could not well be too numerously provided. 

" In order to get clear of such doubtful observations as these, 
even when uttered in a cheerful mood, we stepped forth under the 
burning, star-strewn heaven, and lingered so long there that our 
after-portion of sleep might be set down at nothing, since we 
quitted it before sunrise. We went instantly out, in order to gaze 



108 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

down into the grey Rhine glens. A fresh wind blew thence in our 
faces, especially favourable to the upward sailers, and to the 
crossers-over. Already are the vessels wholly in activity of prepa- 
ration. The sails are set; and from above the guns again are fired 
to begin the day, as in the evening they had been to announce it. 
Already isolated figures and groups shew themselves against the 
clear sky round the chapel, and on the ridges of the hill: but the 
shores and the stream are yet but little astir. 

" The passion for natural inquiry wiled us away to see a collec- 
tion, in which the metallic productions of the Westerwald in its 
length and breadth, and especially of the mines of Rheinbreitenbach, 
should lie before us. But this scientific attraction had nearly cost us 
too dear; for we found, as we came back to the shore, that the people 
were in the liveliest stir of departure. In masses they crowd on 
board, and one overloaded boat after another pushes off from the 
land. Looking up the stream we see throngs coming along, 
wagons hastening, boats from the upper districts landing their 
living cargoes. The sides of the mountain swarm with the many- 
coloured masses of climbers, striving to reach the summit by foot- 
paths, more or less steep. A continued discharge of cannon 
announces that pilgrim troops from other places are seen on their 
way. 

"Now it is time! Even we are in the midst of the stream. 
Our sails and rudder contend in the rivalry with hundreds. Reach- 
ing the banks, we mount the steepest zigzag stair leading over the 
rocks, with hundreds upon hundreds, slowly, often resting, and 
joking. It was the table of Cebes, in the truest sense — moving, 
living, — only here were not to be found so many downward con- 
ducting paths. 

" Above, we found around the chapel crush and thronging. 
We found our way in with the mass. The inner space is a nearly 
equal-sided square, each side of about thirty feet, the choir in 
length about twenty. Here stands the chief altar; not modern, 
but in well-adorned Catholic ecclesiastical taste. It is very lofty, 
and the chapel has altogether a fine, free aspect. In the nearest 
corners also of the main square are two similar altars, undamaged, 
and all as in the former times. And how are we to explain this in 
a newly-ravaged church ? 



PILGRIMAGES. 109 

"The throng moved from the chief entrance towards the high 
altar, then turned to the left, where they testified their deep vene- 
ration for a relic lying displayed in a glass coffin. Every one 
touched this coffin, crossed and blessed himself, and lingered 
before it as long as he could ; but the ever-coming mass drove all 
before it irresistibly forward, and thus was I carried on in the 
torrent, and pushed out at the side-door. 

" Old men from Bingen step up to us, in order to greet our 
worthy guide, the officer of the Duke of Nassau. They praise him 
as a good and helping neighbour, yes, as the man who had done 
all in his power to enable them to celebrate the feast of to-day 
with proper respect. Now we learn that when the convent of 
Cibingen was dissolved, the internal apparatus of the church 
service, the altar, the pulpit, the organ, the prayer-stools, and 
confessional, were all transferred for a trifling sum to the people of 
Bingen, for the complete refitting of St. Rochus' chapel. As the 
Protestants had thus shewn themselves so ready to furnish these 
requisites, the collective body of the Bingen citizens engaged per- 
sonally to bring those things over hither. They proceeded to 
Cibingen; all was carefully taken down; individuals took charge 
of smaller articles; combined numbers bore away the larger; and 
so they carried them, ant-like — pillars and mouldings, pictures and 
ornaments, down to the river. There, in accordance with their 
vow, the fishermen were assembled to receive them; they put them 
across, landed them on the left bank, and now on men^s shoulders 
were they borne up the mountain paths. As this was going on, 
those above at the chapel, looking over land and water, could see 
the most singular train, with carving and painting, gilding and 
lackerwork, in many-coloured procession moving along, and think- 
ing with a pleasant feeling, that every one there labouring along 
under his burden, might hope to win by his labour, blessing and 
edification for his whole life. The organ thus brought, but not 
yet set up, will find its place on a gallery opposite to the high 
altar. Now first was the enigma expounded; now each one 
answered for himself the former query, — how it was that all these 
ornaments were already old, and yet well preserved; undamaged, 
and yet not new; and thus shew themselves in a place thus newly 
restored. 



110 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

" This present condition of this house of God is so much the 
more satisfactory to us, as we call to mind the good will, the 
mutual assistance, the pursuing and completion of the work, 
by which it has been brought to what it is. That all has been 
proceeded in with deep consideration is shewn by this, that as 
the altar came from a much larger church, it was resolved here 
to raise the walls many feet, by which has been obtained a hand- 
some and most richly ornamented space. The older believers can 
now kneel before the same altar on the left bank of the Rhine, 
before which, from their youth upwards, they had worshipped on 
the right. Moreover, the reverencing of these holy bones was 
already a matter of ancient custom. These remains of the holy 
St. Rupprecht, which the people had formerly touched in faith and 
boasted of as being most helpful, they also found here; and thus 
many experienced the joyful feeling of once more being able to 
draw near to a long-tried patron. It was observed that it could 
not have been seemly to include these in the bargain and sale, to 
have set a price upon them, — no, they came, more likely as a gift 
in pious addition, at the same time, to St. Rochus. Would that 
people everywhere, in similar cases, might experience a similar 
forbearance ! 

"And now the turmoil seizes on us. Thousands upon thou- 
sands demand our attention. These tribes of people are not strik- 
ingly different in costume, but they are of the most varied cast of 
countenance. The tumult, however, permits you to come to no 
settled comparison. General characteristics one seeks in vain in 
this momentary confusion. We lose the thread of our observation, 
and allow ourselves to be drawn into the vortex of life. A row of 
booths, such as a Kirchweigh festival exhibits, stands not far from 
the chapel. Ready for sale stand tapers, yellow, white, coloured, 
adapted to 'the different means of the dedicators. Prayer-books 
are in plenty; the offices of the saint there to be worshipped. In 
vain did we ask for a pleasant pamphlet, in which was set forth a 
clear account of his life, his achievements, aud his sufferings. 

Rosaries of all sorts were in abundance, as were also bread, 
caraway cakes, peppermints, and a multiplication of pastry, with no 
less of playthings, galantine wans, etc., to fascinate the children 
of different age8. 



PILGRIMAGES. Ill 

"Processions kept coming on. Villages distinguished themselves 
from villages. The view of them to a quiet spectator might have 
afforded some results of observation. On the whole one might say 
the children were handsome, the young not, the countenances of 
the old were very marked; amongst these were numerous grey 
heads. They came on with song and answer; banners waved, 
standards flapped, and large and larger grew the tapers, train after 
train. Every company had its Mother of God borne by children 
and maidens, new clad, and adorned with many rose-coloured, rich, 
fluttering knots of ribbons. Pleasant and peculiar was one Christ- 
child, which held a large cross, and gazed amiably on that instru- 
ment of martyrdom. ' Ah'/ cried a tender-hearted spectator, 'is 
not every child that looks forth joyfully into the world, in the very 
same case?' They had clothed it in cloth of gold, and it looked 
like a young prince, right lovely and cheerful. 

" But a great commotion shews itself. Now comes the grand 
procession up from Bingen ; the people hurry to the back of the 
hill towards it; and now one stands astonished at once over the 
beautiful and splendid stretch of landscape in a totally different 
scene. The city itself, well built and maintained; the gardens and 
groups of trees around it, at the end of a soft vale where flows out 
the Nahe. And now the Rhine, the Mouse-tower, the Ehrenberg. 
In the background the solemn and grey walls of rock, amongst 
which the mighty flood forces itself and disappears. 

"The procession comes up the hill arrayed and ordered like the 
others. In the front come the least boys, behind them the youths 
and men; then comes borne the holy Rochus, in black velvet 
pilgrim garb, and a royal gold-bordered mantle of the same stuff, 
from beneath which peeps forth a little dog, holding a piece of 
bread between its teeth. Immediately after this come boys of a 
middle age, in short black pilgrim-hooded frocks, scallop-shells on 
hat and collar, and staves in the hand. Then walk solemn men, 
neither to be classed as peasants nor burghers. In their expressive 
features I fancied I discovered boatmen, men who their whole lives 
through drive daily a dangerous and critical trade, in which every 
moment the mind must be on the watch. 

"A red silk canopy came rocking up, under which was adored 
the Most Venerable, borne by the bishop, surrounded by spiritual 



112 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

dignitaries, and accompanied by Austrian soldiers, followed by the 
authorities of the day. So pressed they on to celebrate this politico- 
religious feast, which should serve as a symbol of the recovered left 
bank of the Rhine, as well as the freedom of faith in signs and 
wonders. 

" But should I express in a few words the most common impres- 
sion which all processions leave upon me, I should say the children 
were altogether glad, good-natured, and self-enjoying, as on anew, 
wonderful, and lively occasion. The young people, on the contrary, 
marched forwards with indifference, since they were born in a bad 
time, could connect the festival with no pleasant memories; and he 
who does not look back on what is good, hopes not. The old, 
however, were all affected, as by a happy time returning, when to 
them it could no longer be of use. Hence one sees that the life of 
man is only in so far valuable as it has a consequence. 

" But now the observer was rudely startled, and drawn away 
from this noble, and in many respects, interesting spectacle, by a 
noise in the van, through a wonderful, general, and vehement 
outcry. Here again experience repeated itself: — a solemn, sorrow- 
ful, ay, terrible fate, is often interrupted by an unforeseen and 
tasteless cause. On the hill behind us rises a singular call. It is 
not of the tone of contention, of terror, of fury, but yet wild enough. 
Amongst stones and thickets and wild weeds, runs an excited, here 
and there running multitude, crying "halt! here! there! yonder! 
now ! here ! now this way ! " So rings it in every variation of 
tones. Hundreds are running, leaping with headlong recklessness, 
as chasing and pursuing. But exactly as the bishop, with the most 
venerable train, reaches the height, is the riddle expounded. A 
nimble, strong young fellow, runs to the front to make a pleasant 
exhibition of a bleeding badger. The poor innocent creature, 
startled by the commotion of the pious throng pressing up the hill 
on all sides, and cut off from his hole, is at the festival richest in 
mercy, by ever pitiless men, killed in the very moment most 
pregnant with blessings. 

"Equipoise and solemnity were, however, speedily again restored, 
and the attention attracted by a new and stately approaching 
procession; lor while the bishop proceeded towards the ehureh, the 
people of Bidenheim, numerous and respectable, drew near. Here 



PILGRIMAGES. 113 

also failed the attempt to penetrate the character of this particular 
district. We, bewildered through so much that was bewildering, 
let them in the growing bewilderment quietly draw off. 

All now pressed towards the chapel, and strove to make their 
way in. We, driven on the way to the outside, continued in the 
open air, in order on the back side of the hill to enjoy the wide 
extended prospect which opened itself into that valley through 
which the Nahe unseen glid on its way. Here a good eye com- 
manded the most varied and fruitful country to the very foot of the 
Donnersberg, whose mighty ridge magnificently closed the distance. 
But now we became irresistibly aware that we had approximated 
ourselves to the good things of life. Tents, booths, benches, 
screens of all kinds, stood here all in array. A welcome smell of 
roasting meat came rushing upon us. We found a young active 
landlady, busy about a great wide glowing ash-heap, roasting, — 
she was a butcher's daughter, — fresh sausages. By her exertions, 
and the incessant bustling of many nimble waiters, was she alone 
able to satisfy such a host of ever-streaming guests. We ourselves, 
supplied plentifully with the steaming viands, and fresh excellent 
bread, busied ourselves to get places at a long table under an 
awning that was already well occupied. The friendly people 
crushed themselves together, and we rejoiced ourselves in a pleasant 
neighbourhood, ay, in the amiable society of visitors, who, from 
the banks of the Nahe, were come to this renewed feast. Lively 
children drank wine like the old ones. Brown jugs with white 
inscriptions of the saint's name, went the round of the family 
circle. We too had supplied ourselves with the like, and set them 
well-filled on the board before us. 

And now was seen the great advantage of such congregations 
of the people, when through some concern of high interest, out of 
such a wide-stretching circle, so many individual rays are drawn 
to one centre. Here, at once, one informs oneself of many different 
provinces. The mineralogist quickly discovered persons who, 
acquainted with the geology of Oberstein, — with agates themselves, 
and their cutting and working, — gave many instructive communica- 
tions to the lover of nature. The quicksilver mines of Muschel- 
Landsberg were also alluded to. Fresh information was acquired, 
and I rejoiced myself in the hope of receiving thence beautiful 



114 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

crystallizations of amalgam. The enjoyment of wine was not 
interrupted by this discourse. We sent our empty jugs again to 
the tapster, who prayed us to have a little patience, till the fourth 
barrel was begun. The third, early in the forenoon, was already 
drawn low. No one here feels ashamed of the love of wine, they 
even to a certain degree boast of their drinking. Lovely ladies 
declare that their children, while at the breast, also were nourished 
with wine. We asked them whether it was really true that clergy- 
men, ay Electors, prided themselves on drinking within four-and- 
twenty hours, their eight Rhine measures — that is, sixteen of our 
bottles ? 

One apparently serious guest remarked, that in answer to this 
question, one need only call to mind the last sermon of their con- 
secrating bishop ; who, after he had represented the drunkenness 
of his flock in the strongest colours, thus closed his sermon. 
" Hence my pious, and to confession and repentance already dis- 
posed hearers, you must be convinced that he perpetrates the 
greatest sin who in such a manner abuses the noble sifts of God. 
The abuse, however, excludes not the use. It stands written, 'Wine 
rejoices the heart of man/ By this it is clearly made manifest 
that, to rejoice ourselves and others, we may and should enjoy our 
wine. But now there is probably no one amongst my male hearers 
who cannot take to himself two measures of wine (four bottles) 
without finding the slightest trace of confusion in his senses ; — but 
he who, on the third or the fourth measure, falls so far into for- 
getfulness of himself, that he does not recognise his own wife and 
children, but abuses them with scolding, striking, and kicking, 
and treats his best friends as his worst enemies; let him retreat 
into himself, and meddle no more with this over-quantity, which 
renders him displeasing to God and man, and a scorner of his 
fellow. 

" But he who, in the enjoyment of four measures, ay, of five 
and six, only feels himself in such a mood that he can take his 
fellow Christian under the arm, can rule his own household, yes, 
is in a condition to follow out the commands of his temporal ami 
spiritual rulers; let him enjoy his modest portion, and take it with 
thankfulness away. Bui let him take heed that, without sufficient 
probation, lie goes no further, since here the goal is generally set 



PILGRIMAGES. 115 

to weak man; for the case is rare in the extreme in which the 
fundamentally munificent God has bestowed on any one the espe- 
cial grace to be able to drink eight measures (sixteen bottles), as 
he has vouchsafed to me, his servant. As, however, it cannot be 
charged to me, that I have fallen into unjust wrath against any 
one; that I have mistaken my relative or the inmates of my house; 
or that I have neglected or put off the spiritual duties and business 
which are incumbent on me; but rather that you are all become 
my witnesses how I am ever in readiness, to the praise and honour 
of God ; and how active I shew myself for the good and benefit of 
my neighbour; so may I yet further rejoice myself with a good 
conscience, and with gratitude for this gift which has been conferred 
upon me. 

" And you, my pious hearers, that he may be in body and in 
soul refreshed, and rejoice according to the will of the Giver, take 
each one his modest portion away with him. And that this may be 
the happy experience, let all superfluity be banished, and let every 
one conduct himself according to the precept of the holy apostle, 
who says, ' Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good/ 

" After this it could not fail, that the chief subject of the con- 
versation should continue wine, as it had been. Then rose imme- 
diately a contention about the superiority of different growths, 
and here it was pleasant to see that the magnates have no dispute 
amongst themselves. Hochheimer, Johannisberger, Rudesheirner, 
allow each other's merits; only amongst gods of the lower grade 
reign jealousy and envy. The very much esteemed red Assmanns- 
ha'user was, especially, subjected to many attacks. I heard a 
vineyard proprietor of Ober-Ingelheim assert that his own came 
very little behind it. The Eilfer was excellent, but there could be 
no testimony of it brought, because it was already all drank out. 
This was thought very reasonable by the present company, as red 
wine must be immediately in its first years enjoyed. On the 
contrary, the company from the Nahe, boasted of a wine growing 
in their country called Monzinger. It was light, they said, and 
pleasant in the drinking, but before you were aware of it, it was 
up in your head. They invited us to come and prove it. We 
were too kindly pressed not to wish that we could enjoy the plea- 
sure, even at some risk, in such good company, of tasting it, and 

i 2 



116 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

trying our strength on it. Our brown jugs too came back well 
filled, and as we saw the cheerful white inscription of the saint's 
name so beneficently everywhere employed, one was ashamed not 
to know sufficiently his history, although we well remembered that, 
denying himself all earthly good, he had not hesitated even to 
stake his life, in waiting on those suffering from the plague. The 
company were set on to relate this entertaining legend, according 
to our wishes, and that to a pitch of perfect emulation, children 
and parents helping one another. 

" One now came to see in what a peculiar manner tradition exists, 
as it wanders from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear. There were 
no contradictions; but innumerable differences, which might spring 
from this cause, each individual mind taking a particular and 
different interest in particular events and circumstances, by which 
one incident is now thrown backward, now forward, and not only 
the different wanderings, but the abode of the saint in different 
places became reversed. An attempt to sketch out the history as 
it was by word-of-mouth related to us, did not succeed with me, 
so it may stand here as it is usually delivered. 

" St. Rochus, a professor of the faith, was born in Montpellier. 
His father's name was John, his mother's Libera. His father had 
not only Montpellier, but many other places under his command. 
He was, however, a pious man, and had long lived without the 
blessing of children, till he had obtained his Rochus by prayer 
from the Virgin Mary, who brought with him a red cross on his 
breast into the world. When his parents fasted, he must fast too ; 
and on such days his mother gave him only the breast. In his 
fifth year he began to eat and drink very little ; in his twelfth, laid 
aside all folly and superfluity, and spent his pocket-money on the 
poor, to whom he was especially kind. He shewed himself diligent 
in study, and acquired great fame for his ability ; and his father, 
moreover, on his death-bed, in a very moving speech, exhorted 
him to follow every good work. He was not yet twenty when he 
lost his parents, but he', then divided all his possessions amongst 
the poor; surrendered his government of the country, travelled to 
Italy, and came to a hospital in which lay many in a contagious 
fever, on whom he would wait; and though, at first, he was not 
readily permitted, but the danger represented to him, yet he per- 



PILGRIMAGES. 117 

sisted, and so soon as be was admitted to the sick, he healed them 
all by touching them with his right hand, and by the sign of the 
holy cross. He then betook himself to Rome, where, amongst 
many others, he freed a cardinal from the plague, and sojourned 
with him for three years. But as he himself at length was attacked 
with this terrible complaint, and was brought into the pesthouse, 
where on account of his cruel pains he was often compelled to 
cry out horribly, he went out of the hospital, and seated himself 
before the door, that he might not disturb the rest with his lamen- 
tations. As the people went past and saw this, they thought it 
had occurred through the negligence of the keepers, but when they 
understood the contrary, everybody took him for a fool and a 
madman, and drove him out of the city, when by the help of his 
staff and God's guidance, with much difficulty, he crept into the 
neighbouring wood. The excess of his pain would not permit him 
to go farther, so here he laid himself down under a sycamore, 
near which there bubbled up a spring from which he could refresh 
himself. 

" Now not far from thence lay an estate belonging to one Gott- 
hardus, whither many of the gentry of the city betook themselves, 
as this Gotthardus had many servants and dogs of the chase. 
Here a singular circumstance arose. A very well-bred hound 
snapped a loaf of bread from the table, and ran off with it. Though 
he was punished, he watched his opportunity the next day, and 
escaped luckily with a second booty. Then the Graf suspected 
some mystery, and followed with his servants. There they found 
under the tree the pious dying pilgrim, who begged them to keep 
at a distance and leave him where he was, that they might not be 
attacked by the same complaint. Gotthardus, however, insisted 
on taking the poor man home, and not quitting him till he was 
restored; and he did all that he could for him. When now Rochus 
had regained a little of his strength, he betook himself to Florence, 
where he healed many of the plague, and was himself, through a 
voice from heaven, fully restored. He exhorted Gotthardus also 
to pitch his dwelling in the wood, and to surrender himself to the 
service of God without ceasing, which Gotthardus promised, if he 
would only remain with him; and after Rochus had sufficiently 
accustomed Gotthardus to his eremitical life, he went again on his 



118 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

way, and after a very arduous journey, came once more home unto 
the city which had belonged to him, and which he had given to his 
cousin. As it was war time, he was taken up for a spy, and was 
brought before the lord of the place, who, on account of his great 
change and wretched raiment, did not know him again, but threw 
him into prison. He thanked God, however, that he permitted 
him to experience all sorts of misfortune, and spent five years in 
the prison; and when any one brought him cooked food he declined 
it, and moreover crucified the flesh with much watching and fast- 
ing. When he perceived that his end drew near, he begged the 
servants of the gaoler to fetch him a priest. Now it was a dark 
dungeon in which he lay, and as the priest came in it was quite 
light; who, therefore, wondered greatly, and so soon as he saw 
Rochus he was struck with something divine in him, and half 
dead with terror, fell to the earth. He hastened as soon as possible 
to the lord of the city, and told him what he had discovered, and 
how greatly God had been offended by their having so long detained 
the most pious of men in so horrible a captivity. When this 
became known in the city, every one ran crowding to the tower. 
St. llochus, however, was overcome with weakness, and gave up 
the ghost; but every one saw through the chinks of the door a 
bright glory stream forth. When the door was opened, they found 
the saint dead and stretched on the earth, and at his head and his 
feet lamps burning. After this, at the command of the lord of the 
place, they buried him with great pomp in the church. He was 
recognised by all, by the red cross which he had on his breast, and 
which he had brought into the world with him; and therefore 
arose a great howling and lamenting. 

"This happened in 1327, the 16th of August; and since that 
time in Venice, where also his body is preserved, a church lias been 
built to his honour. In the year 1414<, when a council was held in 
Constance, and the plague appeared there, and no means to check 
it could be found, it stopped so soon as they called on the name of 
this saint, and set on foot processions in honour of him. 

"Our table was hardly the place to understand quietly this 
peaceful history; for amongst the whole mass of feasters had long 
arisen vehement contentions as to the amount of pilgrims and 
visitors to-day. According to some there were ten thousand; to 



PILGRIMAGES. 110 

others more, and then still more, swarming altogether on this hill- 
top. An Austrian officer, trusting to his military eye, acknow- 
ledged himself inclined to the very highest estimate. 

"Endless discourse was circling round. There were numbers of 
peasants' rules, and. traditionary weather-prophesyings, as to what 
should come to pass this year — such as, ' A dry April is not the 
peasant's will/ ' When the grass-fly sings before the vine springs, 
there will be a good year/ with a host of others. A mountaineer, 
who listened to these many old saws foretelling fruitfulness with 
eagerness, if not with envy, was asked if such were current amongst 
them too; he replied, not in such variety. Their riddles and 
sayings were more simple, thus: 

In the morning round ; 
At noon-day stamped ; 
At evening in panes; 
If it so remains, 
It is sound. 

The people present rejoiced themselves in this contentedness, and 
added, that these were times in which one may be contented to be 
even so well off. 

" But now rise many of the company with complacency from 
the table, to the end of which it was almost impossible to see. 
Others greet and are greeted; and so by degrees falls away the 
multitude. The sitting-together, few, desirable guests alone linger. 
They part reluctantly. They turn to each other once more to enjoy 
the pleasant grief of such a separation, and promise finally to the 
satisfying of some, impossible meetings again. Without the tent 
and booths, you feel instantly, under the high sun, the want of that 
shade which an extensive new planting of walnut trees promises to 
the future grandsons. 

" A new movement announces some new circumstance. People 
are crowding to the preaching. All crush to the east side. There 
the building is not yet completed. Still stands the scaffolding ; 
yet even during the erection one serves God. Even so was it in 
the deserts. Churches and cloisters were erected by pious saints 
with their own hands. Every hewing, every laying down of a 
stone, was a god-service. Connoisseurs are reminded of the strik- 
ing painting of Le Sueur; of the wanderings and workings of the 
holy Bruno. So repeats itself everything distinguished in the great 
world-course. The observant remarks it everywhere. 



120 OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 

"A stone pulpit projecting from the church wall, and supported 
on arches, is accessible only from within. The preacher steps forth; 
a clergyman in his best years. The sun stands high, and therefore 
a boy holds a canopy over him. He speaks with a clear intelligible 
voice, a pure and able discourse. We believed ourselves to have 
seized its meaning, and repeated it many times to our friends. 
* * * Meantime we, his hearers, looked up to the 

pure vault of heaven. The clear blue was enlivened with light 
stretching-away clouds. We stood on a high point. The prospect 
Rhinewards, bright, clear, free; the preacher to our left above us. 
The audience before him, and below us. The space on which this 
numerous company stands is a large unfinished terrace, uneven, and 
behind having steep slopes. In the future, completed and built 
about with a builder's skill, the whole would be one of the loveliest 
situations in the world. No speaker addressing so many thousands 
ever beheld over their heads so splendid a landscape. Now let the 
builder place the multitude on a clear level, perhaps backwards a 
little ascending space, and thus all would see and hear the speaker 
commodiously. But this time, through the incompleted terrace, they 
stood downwards, one behind another, accommodating themselves 
as well as they could; and, as seen from above, one wonderful 
quietly-rolling wave. The place where the bishop listened to the 
preacher, was indicated only by the canopy, he himself was swal- 
lowed up and lost in the multitude. The sagacious builder will 
also erect a proper place for this important ecclesiastical dignity, 
and thereby heighten the solemn state of the occasion. These 
attentions to the unfinished state and capabilities of the place, 
hindered however not attention to the preacher, who now proceeded 
to his second part. * * * The attention to every word of 
the preacher was great; the audience not all to be comprehended 
in one glance. All the individually arriving pilgrims, and all the 
united township processions stood here collected, after they had 
reared their standards and banners by the church, to the left-hand of 
the preacher, to the no small ornament of the scene. But pleasantly 
just by, in a little court which opened itself only too incompletely 
to the assembly, the whole collection of the paintings brought 
hither were elevated to i lie right on scaffolds, as if asserting their 
right as the hearers of the greatest pretensions. 



PILGRIMAGES. 121 

'•'There Moth er-of-God images, of different sizes, stood new and 
fresh in the sunshine. The long rose-coloured ribbons fluttered 
gaily and gladsome in the breeze. The Christ-child in the gold 
stuff continued unchanging his friendly look. The holy Rochus, 
indeed, more than once gazed quietly on his own festival. The 
figure in black velvet, as reasonable, standing aloft. The preacher 
turned now to his third part. * * * * 

" The preacher ended, certainly, to the edification of all ; for 
every one had already comprehended his words, and every one laid 
to heart the intelligible and practical teaching. Now turned the 
bishop back to the church. What passed therein remained hidden 
from us. The resounding of the Te Deum we distinguished from 
without. The in-and-out streaming of the throng was agitated in 
the highest degree. The festival stooped towards its conclusion; 
the processions arranged themselves for their return. The Biden- 
heimer, as the last arrived, set out the first. We longed to escape 
out of the chaos, and therefore drew away with the quiet and grave 
procession of Bingen. In the descent we observed other traces of 
the sad days of the war. The stations of our Lord's sufferings 
were purposely destroyed. By the removal of these, the pious 
Christian and genuine taste for art might work together ; so that 
any one, be he whom he would, might travel this path with a 
livelier sympathy and edification. 

"Arrived in the nobly-situated Bingen, even there we could 
find no rest. We wished, after so many wonderful, divine, and 
human affairs, to plunge headlong into the bracing bath of nature. 
We called a boat, and let the stream bear us away downwards." 

Imagine, in addition to this expressive picture, crowds of 
eager, solemn, and absorbed devotees on their knees before shrines 
in the chapel or church, telling their beads, — their lips moving, 
and tears falling down their cheeks; gazing devoutly on holy 
pictures; planting little burning tapers at the feet of pillars, and 
before images and pictures of saint or virgin; and offering up little 
legs or arms, little infants, or horses of wax, the subjects of their 
present prayers for help; and crowds of others kneeling on the 
outsides of the church, where some saint stands in a niche, or even 
before some tomb where a saint or a departed relative lies, — and you 
have a pretty good idea of one of these periodical pilgrimages. 




(g U & I? T I R 



THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, OR HANDWERKSBTJRSCH E. 



Not less singular nor less conspicuous than the Student-Life ,oi 
Germany, is that of the handwerksbursche, or wandering handi- 
craftsmen. One of the first things on your arrival in the country 
which strikes your eye, is the number of young men on the roads 
with knapsacks on their backs, and stout sticks in their hands. 
They have a wayfaring, but not a mendicant or vagabond look, 
though, to your surprise, they will often, on the approach of your 
carriage, off with their caps and run along beside it, to ask for 
something. Their looks— frequently those of mere boys, often 
handsome lads too, well dressed, though in a peculiar pedestrian 
style— and their good and well-stored knapsacks, do not fail to till 
you With Curiosity, especially when, without the slightest aspect of 
shame or of impudence, they solicit you for money, and you learn. 



THE WANDERING EANDICEAFTSMEN. 123 

on inquiring, that these arc the Gescllen, Handwerksbursche, or 
wandering journeymen of Germany; that this rambling all over 
the country of such numbers of these young men, in every part 
and every direction, is not so much a matter of choice as of neces- 
sity; that, for three or more years after the expiration of their 
apprenticeship, they must thus pursue their travels, and on their, 
return must give evidence of having become perfect in their calling, 
by making their meistersttick, or masterpiece, before they can 
obtain permission to enter on business for themselves. 

The Gildwesen, or existence of guilds, is one of the most ancient 
institutions of the country. In the earliest ages, before the 
Romans broke into and overran Germany, as well as the rest of 
Europe; while the Germans lived in their vast forests, hunting 
their plentiful deer, auerochsen, or buffaloes, bison, boars and 
bears, and fighting one tribe with another, they had a sort of guilds 
amongst them. These were termed Waffenbruderschaften, or 
brotherships-in-arms. The individual members of these brother- 
ships were styled guild-brothers and oath-brothers, because they 
had united for mutual benefit and protection; and before the 
magistrate were held as security for each other, and were regarded, 
in fact, as if they had been but one man ; so that, if any one was 
accused of a misdemeanour, and the guilty person could not be 
fully committed on evidence, all were held equally responsible for 
the deed. These guild-brotherships, called also Wergilda and 
Bergilda, consisted only of ten men, thence termed the tien manna 
tola, or ten-men-number — whence our old word tale for count; 
but these were again comprehended in another community of ten 
times ten, who held their own assemblies for the administration of 
justice, electing from amongst them a person, termed by the Franks, 
Tunginus; by the Longobards, Sculdais; and by the Anglo-Saxons, 
Hundredarius. Hence this custom was established by Alfred rh 
England, every county being divided into hundreds, for both civil 
and military purposes. These popular brotherhoods, or jurisdic- 
tions, were again included, each in a community of ten times a 
hundred, which made in Germany a Gau, or district. 

As the population within these bounds afterwards increased, 
still all the freemen, besides their own private possessions, enjoyed 
in common many public rights, as those of free use of wood and 



124 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

water, of hunting and fowling, and right of way and access to 
whatever in any of these things they had a claim. 

As cities began to be founded, and trades to spring up, the 
national customs planted themselves in them. They who fled into 
these towns to escape the oppressions of the great feudal lords, 
who, in the course of time, had grown into something like sove- 
reign power and severity, still found there the possessors of the 
ground, of the houses already erected, and of the suburban lands. 
These claimed a marked superiority over the new-comers, who, for 
maintenance, were compelled, though free, to betake themselves to 
handicraft trades, or to menial service. These original freeholders 
proudly held themselves apart from these less wealthy new-comers, 
married only amongst themselves, and maintained by other social 
and mercantile intercourse, an exclusive connexion amongst them- 
selves. They termed themselves the Geschlechter, or genteel classes; 
or, as these classes came to be called in England, the gentry. 
They formed themselves into guilds, and assumed the right to elect 
their Aeltermenner, or Schoppen, that is their aldermen; and their 
Schuldeis, or mayor; and to administer the government of their 
city, strictly forbidding any combination amongst the handicraft 
class, which might endanger their self-assumed privileges. 

But as the handicrafts grew in numbers and wealth, they in 
time set at defiance these usurpations; formed themselves into 
unions according to their several trades, which were again. called 
Gilde, or Z'unfte, or Innungen. These, like the primeval guilds, 
were for mutual protection and benefit. The separate guilds again 
combined amongst themselves for general advantage, and each 
z'unft electing its own ziinft-meister, these zunft-meister in their 
meetings elected a burgermeister, as the head of all. Thus 
organized and combined, in time the zunft-gilde or handicraft- 
guilds came into open strife with the kaufmanns-gilde or merchant- 
guilds, and contested with them the government of the city; in 
which they acquired their share, proceeding with the other city 
force to war under their own ziinft or trade-banner, and their 
members in the fourteenth century being declared electable as city 
councillors. 

These cities, so early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
asserted and maintained their freedom, many of them acknow- 



OR HANDWL.RKSBURSCHE. 125 

ledging no superior but the emperor, and being, therefore, called 
Reichstadte, or cities of the empire, as free as any of the surround- 
ing states; and others, though they did not acquire this dignity, 
still maintained their privileges, and were styled Freist'adte, or free 
cities. These cities, amongst which the Hanse Towns became the 
most famous, afterwards entered into treaties and engagements for 
their common benefit, that is, to defend the common rights of 
trade against all usurpers; to protect their markets, and their 
persons and goods in transit from state to state; and also their 
handicrafts, so that they might have the opportunity of pro- 
ceeding from city to city, and thus perfecting themselves in their 
peculiar arts wherever those arts were most ably and skilfully pro- 
secuted. 

They received from the different emperors and rulers, at dif- 
ferent times, in return for their essential aid in money matters, 
in regard to which these rulers were often driven to desperate 
necessity, many privileges, and all their claims were admitted and 
confirmed. Thus it came to be stipulated that no person should, 
in any city, be allowed to follow any handicraft calling, who had 
not conformed himself in all things to the regulations of their 
guilds. He must be duly apprenticed to a regularly authorized 
master and member of a guild, with the exception of a very small 
number, who derived their privileges from the courts, and were 
termed court-handicrafts and free-masters. The apprentice, on 
the expiration of this term, must then proceed with a certificate 
from his guild, on his Wanderschaft, or journey, for three or more 
years, to perfect himself. His years of apprenticeship were termed 
his Lehrjahre, or learning years; those of his travel, his Wander - 
jahre, or wandering years. On his return, he must, if he wished to 
become a master, make a chef d'ouvre, which must be submitted to 
the masters of his guild, and only on their approval of it, could he 
receive his freedom, and right to exercise his calling in a free city. 
There can be little doubt but that both our term journeyman, for 
an artizan working under a master, and our word masterpiece, 
originate in such customs. 

This is the ancient and universal practice of Germany. In 
England, as indeed in France and Italy, and other countries, the 
same system, drawn from the same common source, formerly 



126 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

existed, and yet exists, in our different guilds and regulations 
regarding apprenticeships, and in many towns, of taking up free- 
dom, as in the city of London, where a retailer, though his whole 
stock does not amount to 10/., must take up his freedom at nearly 
that expense, while his next neighbour, because he is a wholesale 
dealer, though he has 100,000/. worth of goods in his warehouse, is 
not required to do it. In England, however, this ancient system, 
though presenting these gross anomalies, exists now but in a frag- 
mentary state ; in Germany, to the present day, it continues in its 
original power, for the Germans are almost as unchangeable in 
their habits as the Eastern nations. 

There is no doubt but that if, instead of all these young men 
wandering all over the country for the appointed term of three 
years, during which period much time is lost in the wandering 
itself, they were sent direct to the few cities where their own craft 
is most successfully pursued, or were taught enough of the English 
and French languages for common purposes, and were sent at once 
to London or Paris, they would in as many months as they now 
spend years learn three times as much. They would thus come at 
one leap to the fountain-heads of that knowledge which they seek, 
and there speedily make themselves masters of the latest discoveries 
and improvements. We should then no longer see, as we do with 
wonder when we first come to Germany, the strange old-fashioned 
locks, door-handles — actually levers — queer knives and forks, comical 
pots and kitchen utensils, odd old-world carriages, lumbering eil- 
wagons, so called, and many other things which throw us back 
some hundreds of years in the history of mechanical improvement. 
Their artists, indeed, do not pursue this method; they sedulously 
seek to acquaint themselves with the master-works of Greece and 
Italy, and the effect is in accordance. But in all else the Germans, 
if left alone, will go on to eternity in the same track. They are 
like steam-engines set upon a line. They are full of power, and 
will march on exerting it for ever in one course, unless some mighty 
influence from without breaks irresistibly in upon them and throws 
them oil' the rail; as Buonaparte broke in, and as steam-power is 
now again breaking in, destined to produce far more wonderful 
changes amongst them than did the fiery Corsican. 

But there are advantages derived from this wandering system 



OR HANDWERKSBTJRSCHE. 12T 

of the handicrafts, which may be said to be far more than a justifi- 
cation of it. If much time is lost to their artistical advancement, 
and if they seldom reach that degree of excellence which an exclu- 
sive direction of their attention to the capitals of Europe would 
bring; on the other hand, they see more of their own country than 
the same class in any part of the world does. They wander at 
public cost through the various states of their common country. 
They see the varieties of men and manners, of cities and costumes. 
The beauties of nature are brought under the eye of all that have a 
feeling for them. They tread the spots celebrated in their history, 
and calculated to inspire a patriotic sentiment. They are made 
aware of the greatness and extent of the fatherland. Galleries, 
works of art, noble specimens of architecture, celebrated ruins, and 
peculiar institutions, are open to their observation; and many of 
them, as we shall see, do not neglect to avail themslves of these 
privileges, and lay up for their future lives a store of the most 
delightful recollections and subjects of conversation. It is, in fact, 
in this point of view, rather than as a means of perfecting them- 
selves in their individual arts, that the excellence of the system, in 
my opinion, lies; though at the same time it is not to be denied 
that it is attended with many dangers and abuses, as it must be, 
while it lets loose such a swarm of raw and rude youths as must of 
necessity exist in this class, who, without gathering much good for 
themselves, are very capable of corrupting those that they circulate 
amongst. But of this more anon; let us now look more minutely 
into the constitution of this wandering system. 

The handicraft guilds are divided into nine or ten different 
kinds ; i.e. they consist of so many different kinds of handicrafts, 
or are differently constituted. For instance, there are city and 
village handicrafts. The city ones consist of those who follow 
the arts which contribute more particularly to the elegances and 
luxuries of life ; and the village ones of such as are there rather 
tolerated because such must be had, than regarded with admiration 
as masters in their calling. Amongst these are classed the ordinary 
run of linen-weavers, wheelwrights, cobblers, tailors, joiners, smiths, 
tilers, bricklayers, and potters. Then there are limited and un- 
limited handicrafts. The limited are those where, through a privi- 
lege granted by the lord of the country, only a certain number of 



128 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

masters in each handicraft are allowed within its bounds; and no 
one can be there constituted a master by the magistrates, without 
the consent of the masters of the guild. In the unlimited, w r here 
the masters of the guild refuse to admit a young man who has 
gone through his years of probation, a magistrate, on his proving 
this, and shewing by his masterpiece that he is entitled to it, 
can compel his admission. There are, again, close and exclusive 
guilds, which consist of the artizans of fine and delicate crafts. 
Such are to be found particularly in Niirnberg, as those of the 
awl-smiths, blacklead-pencil makers, turners, coppersmiths, bell- 
founders, gold and silver wire-drawers, etc. These neither send 
out their youths to study anywhere else nor receive the gesellen 
from any other places, except where the same close guilds exist; 
and towards the handworkers of their trade, who belong not to 
these close guilds, observe none of the usages of the handicraft 
unions. 

They make, again, amongst themselves distinctions into fine 
and coarse trades, as amongst the workers in wood are classed with 
the latter, carpenters, joiners, coopers, and cartwrights; amongst 
the workers in iron, smiths; while fine ones in wood are turners, 
cabinet-makers, and carvers; in metals, spur, file, and locksmiths. 
They have further distinctions between the different branches of a 
handicraft, be it in works in stone, iron, gold, silver, silk, wool, or 
what else. So under the head of workers in leather, are the 
tanners, the fellmongers, the curriers, saddlers, the shoemakers, 
and the glovers. There are also hired handicrafts and retailing 
handicrafts. The first are such as have no right to sell their own 
work, and must, therefore, serve a master. The second class have 
the privilege, if they please, to work on their own account, and to 
stand as dealers in the yearly fairs. There are, again, simple 
and conjoint guilds, i.e. guilds consisting purely of those of one 
trade, and guilds in which two or more trades are united. But 
their most essential distinction, so far as it regards the comfort of 
the gesellen while on their wanderschaft, is into geschenkte and 
ungeschenkte — those who give a stipulated allowance to these young 
men, in case they do not find work in any town. It is a prevailing 
notion that every guild without exception, by a fixed law, appoints 
a regular sum to be given to every gescll, which is contributed by 



OK HANDWERKSBTJRSCHE. 129 

every master in the trade, in each town where he seeks work and 
does not find it; but this is not the case. Some only do this; 
others, again, do it not ; and there is a third class, which, though 
it does not prescribe a fixed sum, ordains that something shall be 
given, which is done out of the common chest. Where but little 
is given, it is the custom of those gesellen who are in work, to 
contribute to assist those who are not; and where nothing is given, 
the gesell on his travels depends upon his own resources, and the 
contributions of his brother workmen who are in employ. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that many of these 
young men who have to travel, and yet depend in a great degree 
on their resources, should be compelled sometimes to beg ; or that 
this being the case with a part of them, should furnish a plea to 
any or all of the rest to do the same. 

Every handicraft has its Herberge, or inn, and here the guild 
has its chest. Here the travelling gesell resorts, and not only 
finds his home till he can obtain work, or must proceed on his 
journey, but here he is sought for by masters who want hands. 
On his arrival he immediately announces himself to the Jung- 
meister, or handworks-messenger, who gives him any information 
that he possesses as to those that need hands. He must then go 
round to the masters, and where they do not happen to be in, the 
Altgesell, or oldest journeyman in each shop, who acts as foreman, 
gives him an answer. 

In the herberge the sick are cared for, and there the guild has 
its meetings. Every guild has it guildmaster, with a handworks- 
deputy, or assessor, appointed by the magistracy, and other 
assistant masters. It has its Ladenmeister, or treasurer, and its 
messenger, or Jungmeister, the latest admitted to the guild, who 
gives notices of these meetings, and is in attendance to execute the 
commands of the elders. In these meetings the chest is opened 
which contains the laws and statutes of the guild, its records, 
accounts, letters, etc. ; and from this circumstance comes the 
expression amongst the handworkers, of whatever is done at these 
meetings, being done at open chest. 

These herberges are very curious. Erom the ceiling depends 
the insignia of the trade to which it belongs. From that of the 
shoemakers, hangs a wooden boot ; from that of the smith, a horse- 

K 



< \ 



130 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

shoe; from that of the coopers, a small barrel; and so on, adorned 
with various coloured ribbons. In a village herberge, where the 
various handicrafts use but one house, the insignia of the different 
trades are suspended over the different tables where the members 
of the different handicrafts sit. 

The apprenticeships vary in duration, from three to six years; 
_ the shorter periods being generally compensated for' by a pro- 
portionate premium. The general term of the wanderschaft is 
three years; but there are handicrafts in which four, and even 
six years, wandering are required. When a youth has served out 
his apprenticeship, it is necessary before he can proceed on his 
wanderschaft, that his master should declare him free at open chest, 
that is, before the assembled guild. Formerly, these guilds or 
ziinfts were very strict in their requirings before an apprentice 
could be entered on the rank of gesell. His freedom and re- 
spectability must be proved by the certificate of his birth ; and to 
maintain the honour of the guild, so far was this carried that 
illegitimate children, and even the legitimate children of shepherds, 
bailiffs, watchmen, beadles, and of those parents who had been in 
a house of correction, were excluded. These absurd proscriptions 
have been justly done away with. 

The youth being made free from his master, demands from the 
guild a copy of his birth and apprenticeship certificates, which lie 
in the chest. These must be signed and sealed by the masters of 
-the ziinft; and besides this, if he shall have worked there as a 
gesell some time between the expiration of his apprenticeship and 
his setting out, must be added a printed form of testimony to 
that effect. All these testimonies are generally copied, not upon 
, separate papers, but into a book called the Wander-book, which 
it behoves him most carefully to preserve, as no handworker with- 
out these documents will be employed by any master. 

If the articles of the ziinft do not expressly require a wander- 
schaft to be made, it remains at the option of the youths themselves 
whether they will make it or not ; but such guilds are very few in 
number. There are some, where the gcsclls do not wander, but 
must work as such for a fixed period, and can remain for that time 
with the master with whom they were apprenticed. The articles of 
the guild declare expressly whether the gesell shall travel within his 



OR HANDWERKSBURSCHE. 131 

own state or beyond it. It is generally required to go beyond it. 
Some trades, but these are few, decree that the gesell, during the 
period of his wanderschaft shall not return home at all. The sons 
of masters in some trades had the privilege either of exemption 
from wandering, or the period was curtailed in duration for them ; 
but this is stated by Mittermeyer to be now contrary to law. 

So then the gesell is freed by his guild; but before he can set ^ 
out he must obtain one thing more, and that is, his passport from 
the police. In earlier times, the handworkers and artists travelled 
without a pass or written document, and were furnished with a 
secret formula, by which they were recognised, called the Hand- 
worker's Greeting ; but the abuses to which this led, especially iff 
unsettled times, by enabling bad characters thus to overrun the 
country, induced the Emperor, in 17ol, to issue an order for the 
whole of Germany, that no person whatever should be allowed to 
travel without a regular passport. The passports of this class, 
therefore, are very strictly demanded, in order that the police may 
be able to keep a sharp oversight on them during their whole term 
of wandering, and so that at any time they may by this means be 
able to tell where any individual of them is. By this means too, 
every youth may be traced by his friends, and the exact circum- 
stances in which he is, can be ascertained at any given time. 

Furnished with this wander-book and this passport, and joining^ 
himself if possible with one or two others, who are setting out on 
their journeys of probation too, he mounts his knapsack, and takes ' 
leave of his friends. With many warnings and good wishes and 
much good advice from father and mother, and from those old 
friends who, in their day, have gone the same wanderschaft, and 
with his heart full of tender regrets at leaving the spot of birth 
and youth, and of wonder, and expectation of what he is to see ; of 
the great cities, and strange people, and curious customs; of the- 
mountains and rivers of which he has heard so much from other ( 
gesellen, or from his father and friends, he sets forth. 

There is a beautiful account in the life of Hans Sachs, the 
celebrated shoemaker-poet of NLirnberg, of his thus setting forth. 

It is thus that we see these youths strolling on in groups, or 
one by one, from town to town, in every part of Germany. A 
leathern knapsack on their backs, under the cover of which is 

K.2 



X 



-^ 



132 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

generally rolled a cape, to throw over their shoulders in rain ; a 
hat, often covered with oilskin ; in summer a linen blouse, bound 
round the waist with a belt; in the hand a stout stick, and in the 
mouth, or peeping out of a pocket, a pipe. The dignity of carry- 
ing a stick and a pipe in public, or in company, is one to which 
the youth only arrives on issuing out of his apprenticeship, and 
taking the rank of a gesell. He has generally a wickerwork-guarded 
flask hanging by his side from a cord, for brandy or wine in cold 
weather, and for wine or water in summer. At each end of his 
knapsack peep the soles of a pair of boots; and he has often, 
moreover, attached to his knapsack, a pair of small wheels, by 
which, when his back is weary of it, he can trail it after him with 
his stick. You see one, now and then, with a long narrow sack, 
which, well stuffed, hangs over one shoulder and down his side, 
like a great horse-collar, but this is rare; the knapsack is the 
general wear. 

The travelling gesell is advised by the experienced to carry no 
more articles with him than are absolutely necessary, and this is 
the most approved stock. Besides the clothes on his back, a 
Sunday suit, two shirts, two pair of stockings, a few handkerchiefs 
and nightcaps, a pair of scissors, needles and thread, of which he 
will often have need, and must learn the use of. If these are well 
packed, he will, says his adviser, have room also for a few books, 
especially a Bible and a handwork-traveller's pocket-book. There 
are pocket-books prepared expressly for his use, and excellent ones 
they are. They contain rules for preserving his health; an alpha- 
betical list of those cities where each trade is pre-eminently pursued, 
and where he can best obtain his object; instructions as to what is 
demanded of him by the police and magistracy; an exposition of 
the constitution of the guilds or innungs; the principles of his 
native language, that he may gradually improve himself in it; 
advice in case of illness; tables of the values of the various moneys 
and of the weights in different states; calculations of expenses; 
admirable tables of routes and distances in every direction, not 
only through his own country, but to the capitals of neighbouring 
kingdoms; lists of the steamers, packet-boats, and railways, and 
everything that relates to eilwagens ami other conveyances, with 
their charges; all that respects sending ami receiving of Letters, 



OR HAXDWERKSBURSCHE. 133 

money, and other packets; trade regulations; a glossary of foreign 
words that he will be most likely to fall in with; accounts of the 
principal buildings, galleries of art, and remarkable objects in those 
countries and cities through which he may go; prognostics of 
weather; and finally, miscellaneous notices for entertainment and 
instruction in solitary hours, 

"When he arrives at a town or village, he knows where to find 
his proper herberge. Here he finds, most probably, others of his 
trade, and learns from them or the landlord, who are the masters 
in the town. He shews his wander-book to the landlord, and that 
becomes security for what he may have during his stay. He has 
then to present his passport at the police-office, and go round to 
the masters to seek work. If he find it, his passport must lie at 
the police-office till he again has to move, and it is amazing in the 
large cities the crowd of these gesellen that you every day see there, 
bringing their passports, or fetching them away again, preparatory 
to their departure. At Vienna an officer used generally to be 
keeping them back from the door, and only letting in a portion of 
the thronging mass from time to time, as they could be attended to. 

In many states they are not allowed to cross the boundaries, 
although furnished with all these requisite documents, unless they 
are each in possession of at least two crowns. When driven to, 
extremity, however, a number of those who travel together will 
contrive by standing near each other, to make two crown pieces 
serve for them all, by dexterously handing them from one to another, 
and thus in succession shewing the same pieces to the officers. 

If they do not find any master in the place wanting a hand, 
they announce this to the zunft-master, who gives them a certificate 
to that effect; and after receiving the Zehrpfennig , or sum that is 
allowed by the guild, they are required without delay of more than 
one day to proceed on their journey. A gesell can receive no 
pecuniary assistance, who either will not take work in the place 
where it is to be had; who has within three months been there and 
received work or a contribution ; who has not the proper certificates, 
or who has been employed in the place on this visit. 

If they receive work, they must deliver up their wander-book, 
to be kept in the ziinft-chest till their departure. When master 
or man wishes to separate, either of them must give eight days' 



134 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

notice. If the man works by the piece, he must complete his piece 
of work before quitting; if by the .week, he can neither leave before 
the Saturday evening, nor be dismissed by his employer before, 
without some extraordinary cause; otherwise, if the master be in 
fault, he will be fined; if the man, his unpaid wages will be 
forfeited. If the master dismiss the man, the man may obtain 
work again in the place immediately, if another master have a 
vacancy; if he leave the master, he cannot go to another in the 
place until he has quitted it for at least fourteen days. 

If a gesell loiter more than a day in a place, after he has done 
working, or after he has been round to all the masters, and has 
obtained no work, or if he have been found begging, he is treated as 
any other vagabond; and if his conduct have been bad, and behave 
left in debt, he is put on what is called the black table> is reported 
to the police, his disgrace is sent on his journey before him, and 
no master can employ him without incurring a fine. 

Such are the regulations under which this great body of young 
men, in the eye of the law, and urged on by necessity and 
strict limitations, wanders from state to state, and city to city, for 
three or more years. When we consider what a swarm of rude 
and inexperienced youths, many of them in fact mere lads, is thus 
sent abroad into new scenes, and amid new temptations, we cannot 
think that there is one rule or restriction too many. Spite of all, 
many a wild scene of fighting Knoten, as these handworkers are in 
contempt called, with the bauers or peasants, is seen. Many a wild 
drinking and dancing at wakes and merrymakings. Many a trick 
is played and carouse is made by the cunning and disorderly. A 
troop of the lazy and lewd will wander on from place to place, not 
being over anxious to get work, or if they get it, soon giving 
notice and going off again. In the summer time you see them 
singing and capering on the highways, or in autumn making very 
merry under one of those fruit trees which grow by the waysides 
from town to town, and whose leaves, battered to the ground, give 
evidence of their vigorous assaults on the ripe temptations. 

On the other hand, to the aspiring and deserving these years 
open up a new world of knowledge and of life; to those who have 
a feeling for nature and for ail — and there arc main amongst this 
class — a world of delight. Imagine a youth who has passed his 



OR HANDWERKSBURSCHE. 135 

apprentice years in some stupid little town, and under some severe 
master; amid circumstances and tempers which make a house 
worse than a prison, and of which the bitterness is only too sure 
to fall on the innocent apprentice — imagine with what delight he 
must look forward to the hour which shall set him free, and spread 
before him a new existence, and new realms and years of novelty, 
variety, more freedom, and, as he fondly hopes, more good. With 
what a sense of elastic life must he spring from the doorstead of 
his cares and oppressions, and stretch the wings of his spirit over 
that wide and hope-tinted space before him. It was this peculiar 
life which gave Goethe the idea of his Wilhelm Meister in his 
Ci Lehrjahre" and his "Wanderjahre;" and has furnished to many 
other German writers, topics and ideas that serve eminently to vary 
their works. And to those, even in these humble classes, who have 
souls which have faculties and feelings beyond the mere circle of 
what the Germans call their bread-sciences — and to none has the 
beneficent Creator entirely denied such, any more than that he has 
denied to the dry heath, the common wayside, and the untrodden 
desert, beauty and the flowers which " blush unseen" there — what , 
a period of enchantment and of rapidly expanding knowledge does 
this wanderschaft become ! In the mountains and woods through - 
which their routes lead them, by the noble rivers which flow 
through their country, they breathe, as they go from one station to 
another in the summer, a soul of poetry, and revel in the richest 
feelings of existence. What moments of deep entrancement, what 
dreams of fancy and of beauty, do some of these humble wanderers 
enjoy, as you see them with their knapsacks flung on the flowery 
turf, and their elbows propped or their heads cushioned upon them, 
as they lie stretched on the green skirts of one of their beautiful 
woods, and by the swift waters of a meadow stream. To many a 
young wanderer, who, but for this ancient custom, would never 
have issued from his native town, as to Hans Sachs, such moments 
no doubt there are, worth a whole life of ordinary existence. 
Visions of the future come before him in the warmest colours of 
anticipated happiness; and sweetest recollections of woods and 
green meadows, and harvest scenes full of happy people, and 
mountain glens, and sunshine and bright waters, and feelings in 
musical sympathy with them all, cling to him thence to his latest 



136 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

days, making his native land as hallowed to him as his own hearth 
and existence. 

If any one think this too poetical to be true, we can only 
advise him to enter the dwellings of such men as shoemakers, 
saddlers, or other such handicraft tradesmen, and talk with them 
and their families, and he will soon convince himself to the con- 
trary. He will find something at once so manly and so friendly, 
such a domestic feeling and such a feeling of nature, as will most 
agreeably surprise him. We have no doubt whatever that it is this 
nature-loving and poetical feeling which so universally distinguishes 
the Germans, even to the commonest class; which has been by 
means of these wanderings wonderfully developed in the man, and 
thence introduced into and diffused through every member of their 
families. It is this which sends them forth on all Sundays and 
holidays in such crowds into the country to solitary wirthshouses 
in the woods, into the villages and the hills, to smoke their pipes 
and drink their coffee in orchards and garden-arbours, all Germany 
over. It is this which makes them read Goethe, Schiller, Hauff, 
and such other of their writers as abound in and cherish this spirit. 
It would have surprised many an Englishman, who has been accus- 
tomed to regard a poor saddler but as a man who reads only his 
newspaper, and his wife and daughter nothing, to have heard such 
a family, into whose house we only went to get a strap mended 
which broke in passing, speaking of the delight with which they 
read such authors; to have seen the glow of enthusiastic pleasure 
which kindled in the father's eyes as you mentioned places in distant 
states where he had been in his wander-years; and to hear them 
describe the heavenly pleasure it was to them on summer mornings 
to arise before the sun and ascend the neighbouring mountains to 
a tower on their summit, and there to see the sun rise — the wide 
world below, the clear heavens above; and then to take breakfast 
there with some of their friends. "Oh!" said the wife, "it was 
ganz himmlich, himmlich ! — quite heavenly, heavenly! and it was 
impossible not to feel a spirit of worship." The institutions and 
education which bring such a spirit and such feelings into the 
heart of the burgher families, are not only a domestic but a national 
blessing; and that such spirit and feelings abound in this class in 
Germany, von will al once discover when yon will take the trouble 
to converse freery and kindly with its members. 



OR HANDWERKSBTJRSCHE. 137 

But to return: — It is a genuine pleasure to see the young men 
in such scenes as we have spoken of; for there is no fine scenery 
where you do not meet them, evidently wandering as full of admi- 
ration and silent delight as the proudest traveller in his easy 
carriage. There is not an old castle or a battle-scene, famous for 
its fine location or its associations, where you do not encounter 
them ; and it is not easy to express the sympathy we felt for two 
such young men, very interesting and modest in their appearance, 
whom we crossed more than once on our route from Leipsic to 
Frankfort. At Eisenach they had ascended the Wartburg, Cele- 
brated as the temporary abode of Luther, when carried off by his 
friend the Elector of Saxony on his return from Worms, in order 
to secure him from his enemies: as the earlier abode of the 
Earls of Thuringia, and scene of a celebrated contest of the Minne- 
singers; and of late as the meeting-place of the Burschenschaft. 
The castle of the Wartburg is reached only by an ascent of about 
half an hotir. We met these two youths ascending, after having 
travelled from a distant town, as we were descending. Seeing 
them again the next day, on the road, we asked them how they had 
been pleased with the castle, and the armoury there. They replied 
that they had not been able to see it, because the doorkeeper 
demanded three groschen, about fourpence, and they had only two 
between them. 

It is the same in cities. They visit galleries of art, public 
works, museums, public gardens, and out-of-door concerts, wherever 
their small means, or the public liberality will admit them ; and if 
they observe the advice given them by the editors of their pocket- 
books, and keep a daily journal of what they see, however concise, 
they must lay up a great mass of information for their future 
use and reflection. By this national institution an advantage is 
bestowed on them, which the artizans of other countries do not 
enjoy, and calculated to enlarge their minds in no ordinary degree. 
It also affords the skilful and deserving many opportunities of 
advancing themselves with masters, whose favour they win, and of 
forming alliances with their families, which ensure their future 
prosperity. 

On the other hand, the weariness and the disappointments 
which sensitive and unenterprising natures must encounter cannot 



138 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN, 

be trifling. Long marches in heat and cold, with scanty means, 
when they meet with but little employ, or belong to penurious 
guilds, are sharp trials of patience. They have often to put up with 
the most wretched lodgings and fare, in obscure dorfs; and if they 
fall ill there, far from their native home and friends, what a melan- 
choly situation ! If our hearts ache as we walk through the 
hospitals of large cities, which monks and nuns maintain from 
public contributions, and act in as nurses and comforters, — where 
all is clean and as cheerful as such places can be, — how much more 
would they, if we could behold the wretched lair, in some wretched 
hamlet, where the gesell, who has fallen ill by the way, perhaps 
five hundred miles from his friends, must lie, filled with sad long- 
ings towards his home and his family ties, till perhaps death release 
him. Well may Hauff assert that many a poor wandering hand- 
Worker carries a heart more heavy than his pack. 

In earlier times his fatigues and perils must have been of no 
ordinary kind, when there were no roads, or very bad ones; when 
the inns were of the most miserable kind, and the woods and open 
country were alike full of plunderers, from the robber-knight in 
his castle to the thief in the forest cave. Even now, if we were to 
take the evidence of the Berlin Handworker's Pocket-book, for the 
present year, the poor gesell has plenty of dangers to guard against. 
" Alone to wander," says he, " is neither safe nor pleasant. AVell 
for him who finds one or two fellow-travellers. Yet join not thy- 
self to any one. Seek to know something of thy companions. 
The more retiring thou art, the better it will be for thee; and a 
little mistrust does no harm on a journey, since thou canst, 
indeed, look into the eyes of thy comrades, but not into their 
hearts. Therefore, open not too much of thy circumstances, or 
thy plans; especially conceal the extent of thy money; and, how- 
ever much thou hast, make thyself seem poorer than thou really 
art. Shew no more money than is absolutely necessary; the poor 
find compassionate hearts, but the boaster and the well-to-do raise 
enemies. Avoid too many fellow-travellers. 

"Keep as much as possible to the highways. Every side-path, 
every woodway, is dangerous. Thou mayest not only diverge 
from the right track, it' one of thy companions do not know it 
exactly, but mayest run into danger of being seized by robbers, and 



OR HANDWERKSBURSCHE. 189 

be plunged into a variety of troubles. When thou leavest the 
herberge, take care to inquire out exactly the right way; note 
down, in all cases, the guiding signs and names of places on the 
road; yet, even in these inquiries, be cautious; and when thou 
observcst suspicious characters, conceal as much as possible the 
real direction of thy journey. When thou losest thyself in the 
woods, mark the bark of the trees. The rough side is towards the 
north; and from that observation steer thy course. If thou 
meetest, on the highway, other wanderers, be not too confidential 
in thy discourse; decline the courtesy of the offered flask, and take 
heed to be the last in the troop. 

" Seek herberge in towns, when possible, rather than in villages, 
and never, or only under the most urgent necessity, in lonely 
alehouses, mills, wood-houses, and the like. It is better to turn 
back again, or to shorten thy day's travel, when thou canst not 
reach the place thou hast intended, than rashly to run thyself into 
danger. Seek to avoid insecure districts, or pass them only in a 
strong party, or early in the morning. Perhaps wagoners may be 
on the way. Join thyself to them, and advance beyond them only 
with the greatest circumspection. Shouldst thou be compelled to 
pass the night in suspicious quarters, spend as little as possible ; 
avoid stupifying drink; place thy knapsack under thy head; grasp 
thy stick in thy hand, and commit thyself to God in earnest prayer. 
Shouldst thou be attacked, defend thyself manfully, where the 
contest is not too unequal; where that is the case, surrender thy 
property to save thy life. 

" Never, if possible to avoid it, travel in winter, at least in the 
raging cold that we sometimes have. In snow storms, venture 
neither alone nor in company on the highways. In summer, not 
small are the dangers of foot-travelling in the heat, from sudden 
coolings, sudden drinking of cold or impure water from stagnant 
pools. Then, never lie down in the woods to sleep. The ground 
is generally damp ; insects and reptiles may do thee serious injury, 
or during sleep base men may rob thee of thy property. In public- 
houses shun the feather-beds; often have the sick and the dying- 
lain in them before thee, and contagion is then almost inevitable ; 
a little clean straw is much healthier. But shouldst thou, spite of 
all prudent precautions, become ill on the journey, tamper not with 



140 THE WANDERING HANDICRAFTSMEN. 

any quackery, but send at once for the best doctor the neighbour- 
hood affords." 

From these solemn cautions one would imagine that the path 
of the wandering gesell is beset with manifold and fearful perils. 
Prom our own experience of travelling at all hours, and in all parts 
of the country, over the wildest heaths and through the deepest 
forests, we should, however, be inclined to imagine that these 
earnest warnings are apt to inspire more terror in some respects 
than there exists cause for. From the many accounts of gesellen 
on their journeys being set on by robbers, to be found in the 
literature of Germany, of which Hauffs story of the Gasthaus in 
Spessart, is one of the most interesting, no doubt such things have 
been frequent enough. But we apprehend now, setting aside the 
feather-beds and the wretched quarters in many common herberges, 
that the greatest perils lie in the pleasant wirthshouse, so enticing to 
the evening pedestrian, and the bright eyes which glance from beneath 
many a quaint head-dress, in dorfs, and fields, and cities on the 
way. Many a handsome youth have we seen gaily marching on, 
with knapsack on back and stick in hand, that would have figured 
finely as the hero of a romance, and no doubt was the hero of 
many, during the chequered period of his wanderschaft. 

Long may the jocund handworker traverse the hills and high- 
ways of his native land, giving picturesque variety to its scenes, 
and gaining knowledge and experience for his future quiet and 
industrious burgher life. 



• 





(gy&^Tl& XL 



THE STUDENT S FUNERAL. 



The Student-Life of Germany is one of the most marked and 
singular features of the country. This condition of social existence 
I have endeavoured to make fully known to my countrymen by 
a volume dedicated to its complete development, which since I 
came to Germany I caused to be written for the purpose, and 
which 1 myself translated and introduced to the British public. 
This volume has, I hear, been smartly attacked and severely 
handled by the critics. On what grounds I know not, for I never 
read such attacks; but this I know, that my intentions in intro- 
ducing the volume to my countrymen were of the most friendly 
kind. I hoped to lay before them something new and curious. 
Something which would not only furnish an agreeable passing 
entertainment, but which, as connected with a country that has the 
reputation of zealously leading the way in education, and where so 
many English youths consequently are sent, would enable parents 
to see the dangers as well as the advantages that would here 
necessarily await their children. I hoped too, by the careful 
translation of some of the most celebrated Student Sougs with the 



142 

accompanying Music, to afford to the lovers of music a domestic 
treat of no ordinary kind. 

From a wide survey of the Universities of Germany since I 
translated that work, I am only the more persuaded that it is 
a fair, if perhaps somewhat too poetical a statement. And my 
opinion is corroborated by the Germans themselves, who are the 
best judges, that the volume is not only in itself the most complete 
and accurate exposition of its subject extant, and therefore a very 
curious and amusing subject of contemplation, but also a valuable 
addition to our literature; giving us new views into human nature, 
and making us better acquainted with the youthful part of the 
population of a great country, from which we draw our common 
ancestry, and with which the advancing arts and knowledge of the 
present time must bring us yearly into closer connexion. 

Referring, therefore, those who would acquaint themselves with 
the character of this portion of the German population to this 
volume, where all their habits and practices are so fully developed, 
I shall here content myself with describing one of their many 
beautiful ceremonies, as seen by myself; and only adding, that 
amid all their follies and whims, great and true fame have the 
Students won on many occasions. To their honour it must be 
said, that in all cases they have stood for the liberty of person and 
conscience. In all the great eras of reformation, or emancipation, 
thev have been the foremost to hail and defend the truth. AVhen 
John Huss raised the name of civil and religious freedom in 
Bohemia, the students of Prague, which then boasted of forty 
thousand, rushed its earliest champions into the field, and three 
of them were amongst the first who laid their heads on the block 
in the cause. In the Thirty Years' War, when Austria and the 
Jesuits resolved to root Protestantism out of the kingdom, and 
did it in the most systematic and horrible course of butchery on 
record, the students stood forth bravely on the right side; and 
the appearance of one of them as a leader, known only as "The 
Unknown Student/' is one of the most singular and romantic 
passages of that war. 

When Luther disputed with the Pope's legate at Leipsic, they 
crowded round ;ind applauded. When he burnt the Papal bull 
before the gates of Witteniberg, il was the students who collected 



THE STUDENT'S FUNERAL. 14o 

wood for the pile, thronged round the bold Reformer, and defied 
his enemies. When Buonaparte had laid Europe at his feet, they 
were amongst the first to arouse the indignant population, and with 
the people fighting hand to hand before the gates of Leipsic, over- 
whelmed him in the Battle of the Nations. While therefore, seeing, 
after a long sojourn amongst them, and observation of them in 
many of their college towns, much which would admit of improve- 
ment and reform, I am not one of those who would visit with a 
furious severity the practices which differ from our own, but see in 
their noble qualities enough to cover a multidude of sins. Their 
grand and distinguishing trait, is a love of freedom and of their 
country; and they who have had opportunity to experience their 
friendly disposition, and their genuine courtesy, spite of their often 
rough and wild exterior, will witness with a strong sympathy, — 

a student's funeral. 

On the 22d of July 1840, I witnessed, in Heidelberg, one 
of these most singular and striking ceremonies. The deceased 
was a young man from Hamburgh, who died of consump- 
tion; and the general esteem in which he was held by his fellow 
students was testified by the mode in which they celebrated his 
obsequies. When it is intended to shew more than ordinary respect 
for a deceased fellow student, his funeral is conducted by torch- 
light, and all or the greater part of the students attend. This was 
said to be a most excellent young man, and the circumstances 
connected with his decease in no trifling degree affecting. 

It was not till three weeks before his death, that his complaint 
had assumed a decidedly dangerous character. Intelligence of this 
was sent to his parents. They were very old and infirm, and their 
eldest son was requested to go and see his brother. This son, 
however, was a merchant of very extensive transactions, and too 
much involved in pressing engagements to permit him immediately 
to leave home. His journey was deferred from day to day, and thus 
the young man, going off more rapidly than was expected, never had 
the satisfaction of seeing either his parents or his brother. Great 
sympathy had however been excited for him in the minds of his 
fellow students, and especially of those from his native city, and it 
is one of the redeeming features of the character of these young 



144 the student's funeral. 

men, that they are by no means wanting in kindness to each other 
in illness. 

Bells were tolling from various churches, and the procession 
was proceeding through the principal street to the lodgings of 
the deceased, as we went into the city about eight o'clock. We 
were at too great a distance to see more than a crowd and the 
torches ; but on reaching the house, the scene was singular to an 
English eye, and deeply interesting. The main part of the pro- 
cession had halted at the distance of three or four hundred yards, 
where they had extinguished . their torches. Before this house 
stood a sort of low covered car, or wagon, with six black horses ; 
the four first, in German fashion, at a considerable distance from 
each other, and from the wheelers, and having, as usual, traces of 
ropes, but in this case black ones. The car which, unlike our 
English hearses, was not boarded up top and sides, but appeared 
merely covered with an awning supported by bows of wood, had 
laid upon it a plain pall of black velvet, — and upon the pall, three 
garlands of leaves and flowers. The outer garlands seemed to be 
composed entirely of laurels, and occupied the whole outer portion 
of the pall, with the exception of a broad margin. Within that 
was another, which appeared composed of roses and lilies ; and 
then a central one, of flowers also. This inner garland, which was 
very beautiful, was said to be the work and gift of a female hand. 
Within it lay his cap, his gloves, and sword. One wondered that 
the sword should be there, and the books not ; and had one in- 
clined to be critical on such an occasion, we should have asked 
why not as well as the sword, the pipe, the beer-glass, the stick, 
and the spectacles ? The sword, except as denoting the character 
of the students for duelling, was a singular appendage for a student, 
but, without being too critical, the whole effect was rich and 
beautiful. 

The garlands of laurel and splendid flowers were so dispersed 
as to cover nearly the whole surface of the pall with a mass of 
rich and mosaic beauty, which was made visible to the crowd of 
spectators by a light set upon it, as well as by the flare of a cresset - 
fire, which was burning before the house, on the opposite side of 
the little street. Behind the car stood two rows of about twenty 
torch-bearers each, but with their torches also extinguished. These 



145 

men were not students, but hired attendants, probably the boot- 
cleaners of the students, called by them boot-foxes. Many of 
them were of considerable age. 

In this manner stood the car and its attendants before the 
house for about a quarter of an hour, when the coffin, also richly 
covered with black velvet, and white ornamental work of silver- 
plated nails and shields, was put into the car, the light was re- 
moved from the top, and the attendants, lighting their torches at 
the funereal fire in the cresset, communicated light from one to 
another down the line. The pall-bearers, who were young students 
from the native town or neighbourhood of the deceased, took their 
places on each side of the car, dressed in court dresses, with their 
swords, and wearing white scarfs. The mutes, with staves of 
black, ornamented with bunches of white crape, walked on each 
side ; the band struck up a mournful funeral strain, and the pro- 
cession moved on. The band, a military one from Mannheim, a 
full and very superior one, preceded the car, the musicians being- 
clothed also in black. Immediately behind, came the chief- 
mourners, young students in full dresses, with white neckcloths, 
and white gloves. These carried no torches, but on each side of 
them walked the hired torch-bearers. Then followed the main 
and almost innumerable train of students, in their usual costume 
of frock-coats and caps, headed by two professors in their college 
gowns and caps. Several gendarmes were to be seen marching 
between the lines of the students, in their green uniforms, and 
here and there the senior or head of a chore, or a marshal in 
his cocked hat, long-tailed blue coat, white breeches and jack- 
boots, having his hat trimmed with white crape or ribbon, and 
wearing a long white scarf over his shoulder. 

The procession, taking a circuit, came along the main street 
for a considerable part of its length, where, of course, a dense 
crowd was collected, and every window in the upper rooms thronged 
with spectators. The students were about seven hundred, and it 
is probable that the greater part followed, for the whole length of 
the street, as far as it could be seen both ways, was occupied by 
their two lines of torches, and they continued passing for some 
time. The whole procession could not be much less in length than 
half a mile. The effect was singular and impressive. The crowds 

L 



146 the student's funeral. 

were silent and respectful, and though you saw numbers of students 
in the latter portion of the line, unable to restrain entirely their 
customary exuberance of spirits, smiling significantly here and 
there at spectators, and holding their torches as they went along 
towards any groups where there appeared any pretty girls, so as 
to light them up conspicuously, yet, on the whole, nothing could 
be more solemn and decorous. The procession passed on to the 
church near the end of the city, where the students are generally 
buried, when the clergyman performed the customary service, and 
then a student pronounced an oration over their departed com- 
panion. 

The service being over, the procession then returned by the 
main street to the Museum Platz. There we had secured windows 
in the upper story of the Museum, and saw with wonder the scene 
which ensued. Here in this square, where the University stands, 
they burn and extinguish the funeral torches. There is something 
very apropos, and significant in this. There, where the youth 
came to light up the flame of a life's knowledge, they light up the 
last flame of his obsequies; there, where his light has gone out 
and departed for ever, they extinguish the wasted torches of his 
funeral, and mark by an expressive act, that his career on earth is 
eternally closed. 

As we stood at the window of the Museum, we could see above 
the houses the light in the air over the spot where they were 
committing his mortal remains to the earth. Anon, the light 
moved, it became like a streaming lustrous cloud above the roofs 
in the direction of the High-street. The sound of the music 
became audible, and presently the first torches came flaring through 
the darkness, round the corner, from the street into the square. 

Nothing can surpass the strange and wild effect of this scene. 
The procession, which had gone towards the church slowly, now 
returned at a quick pace; the music, which had been dolorous and 
complaining, was now gay and triumphant. The band was play- 
ing a martial and resounding air; the students in a wild troop, 
three abreast, came rushing on, whirling round and round their 
torches, and shaking them above their heads, like so many wild 
Bacchanalians, and crowds of boys ami young men ran on each 
side, amid the mingled flare ami smoke, and gloom, some of them 



the student's funeral. 147 

having snatched up fallen and nearly burnt-out torches, and whirl- 
ing them fiercely about as they ran. 

The band halted before the door of the Museum, and con- 
tinued playing while the students formed themselves into a large 
circle in the square. The first, as he took his place, flung his 
blazing torch to some distance on the ground, and every one as he 
arrived did the same. This became the centre of the rine, round 
which the whole train arranged itself; and as the young men came 
near its bounds, they tossed up their torches into the air, which 
came whirling and flaming down from a hundred places into the 
area of the circle. The scene was most wild and strange. The 
gathering ring of densely-standing figures, all in the Burschen 
costume; the lights tossing, and spinning, and falling through 
the air; the hundreds of them lying and blazing on the ground; 
while others, flying errant, dropped into the thickest masses of the 
spectators, and were again snatched up, and again sent aloft, and 
through all this the band playing in a consonant thunder and 
rending strain of exulting music. 

In going, they had mourned the loss of a friend and fellow 
mortal cut off in the early hopes of youth; they had now paid the 
last acts of humanity, and rejoiced only in the advent of the departed 
to a second and more glorious life. This rejoicing music after a 
military, and as in this case of an academical, funeral, is like a 
recognition of the immortality of man. It is like, and no doubt is 
intended to be, a vivid exultation in the resurrection, and a figurative 
declaration of the great truth, that, as all has been done for the 
departed which could tend to keep him longer with us, or to 
smooth his passage to eternity; that, as all duties which nature 
and friendship require, were now performed towards him, regrets 
are vain; he needs none; and, as to us, they are worse than useless; 
we leave him to his felicity, and return to the duties and the social 
gladness of the earth. 

When the circle was complete, and all the torches had been flung 
down, the marschals and the police were seen walking about in it. 
The scattered torches were thrown together till they formed one 
blazing heap, which illuminated with its red light the whole walls 
and windows of the square, and sent up a rolling column of pitchy 
smoke, that hung like a sable canopy above the crowds. At once 

l2 



148 the student's funeral. 

the band ceased playing; there was a pause of deep silence, and then 
the whole circle of students, as they stood round the flames, burst 
forth into a funeral song, which, unexpected as it was, and sudden 
and solemn as was the strain, startled and thrilled beyond descrip- 
tion. The deep red light flung upon the circle; the dark groups 
behind; the marschals and seniors standing with drawn swords; 
the blazing pile in the centre, and the sound of that funeral hymn 
sung by hundreds of deep and manly voices, like the sound as of 
• the sea itself, — was altogether so wild, so novel, and strange, that 
it is not to be conceived by those who have not witnessed the like, 
nor forgotten by those who have. The song was that sung on all 
such occasions, the hymn for the maintenance of their academical 
liberty. As it closed, one of the seniors stood forward, and wielded 
his sword as in defiance. The rest rushed together, and with wild 
cries clashing their swords above their heads, there was a shout — 
" Quench the fire!" and the whole of the students at once dispersed. 
The crowds then closed round it; water was thrown on the flames; 
the dense black column of smoke changed into a white one, and 
the whole was over. 

It is very rare that a funeral of this kind is conducted on so 
extensive and expensive a scale. For five years there had been 
nothing besides of the kind in Heidelberg, except that of a pro- 
fessor, about six months before this. He was in high esteem 
amongst the students for his learning and personal worth; and at 
the time of this youth's funeral, they were still wearing in their 
caps a little coloured knot, or badge, in memory of him. 

It was curious to hear the comments of a young Englishman 
on this funeral, who happened to go to the same house as we did, 
did, to sec the procession pass. There is, as is well known, a 
certain and numerous class of the English, who have made tliem- 
sel\ ea very ridiculous, and very disgusting in Germany, as in most 
other countries on the Continent. These arc people with more 
motley than anything else, besides folly; of whom we find plenty at 
home, iiinl whom it would be much to the honour of England if 
they eon hi he persuaded to stay at home, and figure away there at 
the congenial seems so plentifully open to them ; as races, clubs, 
theatres, gambling-houses, hells; drinking, smoking, and other 
resorts of dissipation; and monej squandering, galloping, larking. 



the student's funeral. 149 

Waterfording, vowing, and rowing expeditions. But these people 
must ramble everywhere, as far as money will cany them, to 
make all the world as well acquainted with the numerous family 
of fools which the wealth, and miserable, mischievous education 
of certain classes of England produce, as we are at home. B 
of them with some showy accomplishments and no sound se 
some of them even having that air of elegance which covej 
no valuable quality, — elegance without intellectuality; but the far 
greater part without even these superficial refinements; peoph 
whom you wonder why they go abroad at all, except that it ah 
them a wider field for the display of that folly which has become 
familiar, and therefore has ceased to be noticeable and piquant at 
home. 

These people are to be seen all over the Continent. In Ger- 
many, the Rhine towns are the most infested by v them, and by 
a much inferior class, those who have scraped money together 
in the dens and alleys of London, and, with no pretension to 
gentility, there think to act the gentry, and become the worst 
apes of what is, though bad, by means of a-higher education, 
above them. They associate with a nondescript race, to be found 
in these towns, half English and half German — the worst class 
of all, having the follies and vices of both nations, without their 
sense and virtues. The squabbles, the heart-burnings, the ever- 
lasting feuds and absurdities of this mongrel tribe, are most 
ridiculous, but painful to those who regard the honour of their 
country. The pure and respectable Germans act the exclusives, 
and carefully shun them; and the respectable English either 
keep themselves quiet, associating with the quiet Germans, or 
soon fly to the capitals, where not only a higher grade of 
English live, but where galleries and works of art are open to 
them. 

One of the more aristocratic class, however, of those here 
alluded to, was this young man. He had the appearance of 
a gentleman; was tall, good-looking, and was very polite; but 
his conversation was so interlarded with oaths and slang terms, 
and ornamented with " By Jove \" " By George \" and " The 
Devil I" that it was easy to see what school he had been brought 
up in. 



150 THE STUDENT'S FUNERAL. 

This was the style in which he ran on as the procession passed. 
" What a grand squad are these German students ! Did you ever 
see such a low-bred set ! By Jove ! and ever so many of them 
are nobles ! and some are military ! What an aristocracy ! Look 

there, at that great lounging fellow with the sandy mus- 

tachios ! That's a Count ! By George, I wonder what he'd count 
for in England ! See ! there's another sweet tulip ! that cove with 
the mop of a flambeau that he is snuffing against an old woman's 
nose — that's a Graf, or some devil of a thing ! Look how the 
fellow slinks along. By Jove ! our English aristocracy for me 
after all ! 

"I was at the swimming-bath to-day. I always take a bath 
directly after dinner ; and there came a posse of these great hairy 
fellows, with a lot of hounds, and in they jumped with their 
clothes on, and dogs after them ; and out they got, and walked 

off up the street like so many drowned rats ! I went to 

Olebull's concert t'other night. Did you ever see such a place ! 
The floor was broken, and I just escaped without a broken leg, 
and that was all. And what walls ! as dirty and black as Holborn 
Hill of a rainy day. And what a set of low-lived scoundrels 
looking on ! I was glad I didn't take my wife with me. One 
could not think of taking one's wife to such a place, you know. 

" But what a devil of a thing they are making of this funeral ! 
Pretty swads these are with their torches ! By Jingo, when my 

brother died, my father — he was Colonel of the militia 

then — determined to do the thing in this style. The church 
where my brother had to be buried was eight miles off, and all this 
kind of thing; torches, and all that sort of thing; and the whole 
way was laid down with matting. It cost a devil of a sum I 
can tell you. By Jingo ! eight thousand pounds, and eight 
hundred people at it ! This fellow, I understand, was a precious 
chuck to make all this to do about. He drank himself to death, 
they tell me; drank like a very devil of a fish. He'd have clapped 
his ugly mug at the bridge and sucked up the Neckar if it had 
been beer. That was one of the amiable qualities for which his 
cronies are making all this larum over him; — t'other was lighting, 
lie was the devil of a lighter, they say. But lord! what lighting 



THE STUDENT'S FUNERAL. 151 

is theirs! Did you ever see it? Up to the neck in leather; and if 
they scratch their leather cravat, it's a finish. I asked a fellow 
to-day how many got killed in a year? He said, "0! they never 
kill one another! never such a thing has happened for years." 
By Jingo! hut I should like to have a turn or two with them. 
I'd bore their jackets for them in a jiffy! I'd give 'em their 
bellyful of fighting in a crack !" 

Such was the running commentary of our English traveller, 
from which as soon as possible we ran away, to witness that 
striking conclusion of the funeral already described. 




■y\-> . ■ ,v.4< 





(gtHl^^T^K 2£0 



CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 



The Germans, as we have seen, retain more of the picturesque 
and poetical in their festivals, both public and domestic, than we 
do. They are particularly fond of garlands on all such occasions. 
Their festive or triumphal arches are beautiful. Their dining- 
rooms arc hung with festoons, and adorned with wreaths of 
flowers and green boughs, with great poetical feeling and elegance. 
The birth-days of their princes, or anniversaries of great days in 
their own lives, are celebrated often in picturesque situations. 
Sometimes within the courl of a fine old ruin of a castle on one 
of their mountain heights, such as those above the Rhine, the 



CHRISTMAS-EVE. 153 

Danube, the Elbe, or the Neckar; and the walls and approaches 
are richly decorated with garlands and wreaths. Traces of such a 
festival we found in the court of Auerbach Castle, on the Berg- 
strasse, where the anniversary of the birth-day of the Grand Duke 
of Hesse Darmstadt had been kept. The rural rostrum of moss 
and stones yet remained, from which the army-chaplain had 
delivered an oration. The wreaths of oak leaves on the walls, 
each of which enclosed the name and date of a battle in which 
the Duke had been engaged; some of which, by the bye, must 
have been fought against the Fatherland, under the banners of 
Napoleon, still hung there too. 

On private birth-days, such garlands are as much in use. 
Birth-days are kept more ceremoniously than with us. Your 
friends come in to congratulate you; and at dinner your health is 
drunk with a great touching of glasses. On the wall hangs a 
lyre, formed of wood or other material, covered with moss, and 
adorned with leaves and flowers. This is kept from year to year, 
many of the flowers being everlastings. On the table, round its 
central ornament of sugar-work, a temple generally, with a figure 
or device bearing an appropriate sentiment, burn as many little 
wax-lights as the years at which the person has arrived. You see 
this love of the poetical carried into all occasions of social pleasure. 
In England, we read of wreaths and garlands, but seldom see 
them. In Germany, the bridal and the funeral garlands are still 
no fictions. The bride wears, and goes to church in the Braut- 
kranz, or bridal garland, even the poorest; and the funeral car 
is richly adorned with wreaths of leaves and flowers. On their 
graves are, again, hung wreaths, as in the old times of England; 
and there grow roses and carnations, and other flowers and shrubs, 
making the region of decay lovely. There is also, at balls and 
dancing parties, a great presentation of little bouquets; and 
at the tables d'hote, boys or girls come round and offer you 
bouquets; and will, if required, bring them to your house through 
the whole year. 

But on no occasion does the sentiment and domestic character 
of the Germans shew itself so strongly in this respect, as at Christ- 
mas. This is expressly a family festival. In England it used to 
be so in the olden times, but now it is more a festival of friends. 



154 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

We have in many places still our waits and carol-parties. Parties 
meet at great houses in the country; friends exchange visits; 
dinner and dancing parties are made; and there is great jollity, 
eating of mincepies and roast-beef, drinking of wine, and still, in 
some old houses and rural districts, the burning of the yule-block. 
But in most of these pleasures the more adult personages are 
chiefly considered. The children are, in a great measure, excluded 
from them. The parents and elder brothers and sisters are going 
out to dine, or to evening parties, or are busy receiving their 
friends to such at home. The children get mincepies, but make 
little or no part of the festivities. This is quite the reverse of the 
German custom. There, Christmas-eve is the great family festival, 
to which all, old and young alike, look forward with intense 
delight. It is strictly a domestic and home festival. It is not so 
much a time of being visited and visiting as a time in which eveiy 
family draws round its stove and celebrates a festival of family 
affection. Here the children are not so much secondaries as prin- 
cipals. Their happiness is considered most of all; and in their 
happiness the gladness of all centres and grows. Accordingly, 
there is no time in the whole year towards which all, but especially 
the young and the children, look forward with such eager anticipa- 
tion. It is a feast of the heart, and is emphatically called, Der 
GlilcMiche Abend, the Happy Evening. 

So completely are the pleasures of this evening woven into the 
German mind from childhood up, that poets in their most beautiful 
verses illustrate the delights of their mature years by reference to 
them, as Claudius in some admirable lines entitled 

TAGLICH ZU SINGEN. 

Ich danke Gott und freue mich 

Wie's Kind zur Weighnaehtgabe, 
Dass ich bin, bin ! und dass ich dich, 

Schbn menschlich Antlitz habe. 

Dass ich die Sonne, Berg und Meer, 

Und Laub, und Grass kann sehen, 
Und Abends unterm Stcrnenheer 

Und lieben Monde gehen. 

Und dass mir dann zu Muthe ist, 

Als wi'iin u ir Kinder teamen 
Und sahen was der beil'ge Christ 

Bcscheerel hatte. Amen ! 



OR CHRISTMAS-EYE. 155 

" I thank thee God, and rejoice myself, like the child over its Christmas- 
eve gifts, that I live, live! and that I possess thee, beautiful human coun- 
tenance ! That I can behold the sun, the mountains, the sea, the foliage, 
and the grass, and at evening can walk beneath the host of stars, and the 
dear moon ; and that I am then in heart as full of joy and admiration as when 
we children came and saw what the holy Christ-child had sent us. Amen. 

The very poorest and the very youngest partake as largely in 
the joy of this evening as any. Servants and all participate in it. 
For several months, therefore, there are great preparations making 
amongst the ladies for it. Each member of the family then makes 
a present to all the other members; parents to children and servants, 
children to their parents, servants to their master and mistress, 
and often to the children, children to them and one another. All 
those elegant and useful little things which ladies employ them- 
selves in making — in needlework, in drawing and painting, as 
ornamented purses, slippers, bracelets, watch-pockets, gloves, dress- 
ing up of dolls; articles of warm and ornamental wear, as gay- 
coloured worsted little coats, called Kassaveikas, and cloaks of 
knotted work, are busily preparing. Bead-work presents itself in 
a variety of articles,, as necklaces, purses, card-cases, cigar-cases, 
watch-pockets, in the form of ladies' slippers, and innumerable 
other articles of fancy-work. 

As all these have to be kept from the knowledge of the party 
for whom they are intended, till they are laid out on Christmas- 
eve itself, it is evident that a good deal of management is required. 
During the two or three months before Christmas, therefore, ladies 
are full of secrets, which, spite of the proverb, are faithfully kept. 
They work when they are alone, or when that person of the family 
for whom the thing then in hand is intended is not present. They 
sometimes sit up after the rest are retired, or get up an hour 
earlier, or take out their work and go and sit with a friend at 
another house now and then. But, spite of all these contrivances 
and precautions, there are dangers of continual surprises; and when 
you enter rather unexpectedly into a room, you see a great bustle 
and a hiding away of things under sofa-cushions, at the bottom of 
work-bags and baskets. These little schemes and alarms occasion, 
as may be supposed, a good deal of merriment amongst those who 
are in the particular secrets; and all round have secrets that one or 
another is not in. 



156 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

All this time, too, there is much considering going on in dif- 
ferent heads as to what presents that are to be purchased, shall be 
purchased. Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, are picking 
up by reflection, and by what occurs in conversation, ideas of what 
would be most acceptable or beneficial to the different members of 
their domestic circle. And then comes a looking-out for it. At 
the autumn fairs a great number of things are bought with an 
express reference to Christmas; and till then are stowed away 
in secret. But for about a month before Christmas the shops 
are all filled with things for presents. Not merely the toy- 
shops and shops of fancy wares, but every man who by a possi- 
bility can turn his shop into a bazaar for Weighnachts-geschenke, 
or Christmas presents, does. A man that all the rest of the year 
is a sieve-maker and seller of turnery ware, suddenly, we observed, 
had his shop filled with every conceivable article of wood that can 
form presents. It was as if a magical spell had been exerted, and all 
his tubs and barrels, and sieves and spigots, were converted into 
dolls, wooden boxes full of toys, chess-boards, and boards of other 
games. His tables were covered with boxes full of little toy house- 
hold things, sets of tea things, sets of kitchen utensils, little dinner 
services, whips and hobbyhorses, carts, wagons, dolls without end, 
churches and other buildings in sections for children to put together, 
and innumerable things of the like kind. The pipe shops are now, 
especially, crowded with these articles, as they, in a smoking 
country like Germany, are of course favourite presents. Every bit 
of their windows is filled, till they seem literally built up with them, 
offering vast variety of meerschaum and porcelain pipe-heads; the 
latter with paintings of countless female faces, scenes from recent 
history and favourite authors, and of favourite spots in the Father- 
land. 

The drapers' shops display most attractive silk pocket-handker- 
chiefs, cravats, waistcoat pieces, etc., as presents for gentlemen ; 
and the newest cloak patterns, shawls, small handkerchiefs for the 
neck, etc., as presents for ladies; all these things being sedulously 
advertised at the same time in the newspapers as the most appro- 
priate and valuable presents which can be made either to ladies OT 
gentlemen. Nor is the furrier forgetful of his avocation. He 
advertises too, and fills his windows with all kinds (if warm fur 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 157 

gloves, fur caps, muffs, boas, and fur collars. There is another 
simp which also conies out into pre-eminence and gaiety at this 
time, like a drawing in sympathetic colours under the influence 
of a sudden heat, that is, the shop where are sold gentlemen's 
braces worked in worsteds and fine silks, and richly embroidered 
tobacco-bags, hanging in long lines of all colours and devices, 
principally of oil-skin, figured with bright dyes, or worsted 
embroidered, or bead work, and with scarlet and blue strings and 
tassels; smoking caps, of white, scarlet, blue, violet, purple, and 
other gay colours, braided with gold and silver thread, or worsted- 
braid, according to the colour and device, each cap finished with its 
long pendent tassel. The Jew turns his front shop into a curiosity 
shop, and through the Blatt (newspaper), informs the present- 
making public that he has collected with infinite pains, and at 
infinite cost, the most extraordinary assortment of relics, jewels, 
old arms, antiques, old pictures, and other unrivalled valuables. 
He has fans which have belonged to nothing less than queens; 
rings formerly worn by princes, cardinals, and emperors; gems 
that have been in the possession of Pericles and Aspasia, Caesar 
or Lucullus; daggers that have perpetrated the most interesting 
murders, and pictures, stained glass from old churches, crucifixes 
from famous shrines, and many similar matters. The stationers' 
and printsellers' windows become conspicuous with, engravings of a 
catholic and devotional character; heads of Christs and Madonnas 
from the old painters; St. Christopher carrying through the flood 
his infant Saviour, and various engravings from paintings on old 
shrines in churches and convents, or done in imitation of them. 
Taschen-bucher, Jahr-bLicher, ornamental calendars, figure nume- 
rously in their windows; and cards ornamented with embossed and 
coloured wreaths, with gilding and painting, containing every 
imaginable emblem of love and friendship, hearts, doves, Cupids, 
flames, scrolls on whicli is inscribed some tender sentiment. These 
are intended to enclose in envelopes, and as billet-doux; in fact, to 
serve the purpose of our valentines, for the Germans do not keep 
Valentine's-day, but send such things now, and on other occasions. 
These, however, are far more tasteful and beautiful than any 
valentines that we have seen in England. Many of these cards 
have their centres cut out, leaving only a margin like the frame of 



158 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

a picture, on which is a wreath of embossed flowers. The centre, 
or where the picture would be, is covered with a piece of white 
crape, on which are fixed different coloured devices, as birds, flowers, 
etc.; or a little book, bound in mother-of-pearl, appears accidentally 
laid on the crape, which, when you lift up the cover, shews you 
written on it some affectionate sentence. Great taste and delicacy 
of construction mark these little mementos. 

But, perhaps, the confectioners shops are in the greatest glory, 
the Germans being as great lovers of sweetmeats as of tobacco. 
Here are to be seen immense quantities of all sorts of little cakes 
and confections; almost every thing that you can conceive in sugar 
and chocolate. Figures in the costumes of all nations; grotesque 
figures; figures of animals, and of all kinds of characters. The 
student smoking, the bauer or peasant, the countrywoman, the 
child on his rocking-horse, Swiss and Tyrolese maidens, all elegantly 
moulded and gaily coloured, with representations of sausages, 
fruits, musical instruments, thimbles, etc. These are chiefly bought 
to hang upon the Christmas-tree. They are set out in the shops 
in separate departments, each after their own kind; and, on 
entering, so well does the sugar-baker know what you are come for, 
that he hands you a basket, and you go round and select such 
figures as you please. 

For about a fortnight before Christmas the markets are filled 
with preparations. Baskets and stalls full of dressed dolls, from 
the price of a penny to a florin or more; various grotesque animals 
of wool, or fur, or wood, intended for lambs, dogs, horses, and 
various other creatures, to which it would be difficult to attach 
name or imaginable resemblance. These are made by the peasants 
or lower class of townspeople, and are sold for the children of such. 
The children of the common schools and infant schools have all a 
present given them, be it only a penny doll, or a little handkerchief 
of a few pence value. Numbers of Christmas-trees shew themselves 
for sale. These are principally tops of fir trees, or boughs straight 
enough to resemble tops. Much damage is said to be done in the 
woods at this season, by the cutting of these tops; the wood- 
watchers are particularly on the alert, and a heavy fine is inflicted 
on any offenders that are taken in the act. These trees are from 
six inches high up to ten or twelve feet or more, according to the 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 159 

size of the house, or the finances of the purchaser. They are 
o-enerally set in a thick board or block of wood, weighted with 
lead, and on this board is made a garden, paled iu with ornamental 
paling, having at the back generally a house of wood or cardboard. 
The garden is filled with moss and green sprigs of the fir, and in 
it stand shepherds, sheep, a dog, a stork, and one or more stags 
with gilded horns. 

This is intended to represent the annunciation of the birth of 
Christ to the shepherds; and, accordingly, an angel is seen, 
suspended by a wire from the stem of the tree, as in the act of 
hovering in the air and proclaiming the glad tidings. The shep- 
herds and animals are made of clay, most grotesque creatures, 
painted in barbarous style; the storks adorned with feathers for 
tails stuck into the clay; and all are propped on little pegs of wood. 

The whole is, no doubt, derived from the legends of the 
Catholic church, and displays pretty much the same degree of art 
and general appearance as it did ages before the Reformation. 

As Christmas-eve approaches, and especially for the few days 
before it, the shops and markets are crowded with purchasers. 
Christmas-trees are seen moving off in various directions, with their 
gardens appended, or others without gardens, the families which 
have purchased these having retained their garden of former years 
on its block of wood. The day of Christmas-eve itself, the floors 
of the shops are literally piled with the baskets of country people, 
which they have set down while they make their little purchases 
for their children. 

The important eve itself arrives. Throughout Germany, in 
every house, from the palace to the cottage, where there are 
children, there stands a Christmas-tree. In the houses of the rich 
and the well-to-do, there has been much preparation. According 
to ancient custom, about a fortnight before Christmas, Pelznichel 
or Knecht Rupert, has made his visit to the children. This person 
represents no other than St. Nicholas, as we learn from an old 
poem. 

ST. NIKLAS. 

Vater. Es wird aus den zeitungen vernommen 
Dass der heilige Niklas werde kommen 
Aus Moskau, wo er gehalten werth, 
Und als ein Heilger wird geehrt ; 



160 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

Er ist bereits schon auf der Falirt. 

Zu besuchen die Schuljugend zart, 

Zu sehen was die kleinen Magdlein und Knaben 

In diesem Jahr gelernet haben; 

In Beten, Schreiben, Singen und Lesen, 

Und ob sie sind h'ubsch fromm gewesen. 

Er hat auch in seinem Sach verschlossen 

Schcine Puppen aus Zucker gegossen, 

Den Kindern welche hiibscli fromm waren 

Will er solche schcine Sachen verehren. 

Kind. Ich bitte dich Sanct Niklas sehr 
Zu meinem Hause audi einkehr; 
Bring Biicher, Kieider, und auch Schuh 
Und noch viel schcine Sachen dazu; 
So will ich lernen wohl 
Und froram seyn wie ich soil. Amen. 

St. Niklas. Gott griiss euch lieben Kinderlein, 

Ihr sollt Vater und Mutter gehorsam seyn, 

So soil euch was Schcine bescheret seyn ; 

Wenn Jhr aber dasselbige nicht tliut 

So bringe ich euch den Stecken und die Ruth. Amen. 

Which in simple prose may be rendered thus : — 

Fatheh. — The Newspapers say that the holy St. Nicholas will soon be 
here from Moscow, where he is held in great esteem, and is honoured as a 
saint. He is already on the way to visit the tender school children. To 
see what the little boys and girls have this year learned in praying, writing, 
singing, and reading; and to see whether they have been pretty good. He 
has put into his sack beautiful dolls of sugar-work, with which to honour 
those children who have been good. 

Child. — Holy St. Nicholas, I pray thee very much to turn into my 
house too. Bring books, and clothes, and shoes, and many another nice 
thing. So will I learn well, and be good, as I should be. Amen. 

St. Nicholas. — God greet you, dear little children. You must be 
obedient to your father and mother, and then shall I give you some 
beautiful Christmas gifts. But if you are not so, I shall bring the stick 
and the rod. Amen. 

Pelznichel is a man disguised in a fur cap, and otherwise made 
awful to children by his singular habiliments, being armed with a 
rod, having a capacious bag or pouch hanging before him, ami 
a large chain thrown round him, whose end being dropped on the 
ground as he walks, makes to their imaginations a mysterious 
noise. Sometimes he has a number of little bells hung about him, 
and thence is called by Hichter, in his Fixlein, " Knecht Ruprecht, 



OR CHliTSTMAS-EVE. 161 

with his jingling bells." His name of Knecht Ruprecht is most 
likely derived from the idea that he is the servant of the Christ- 
child, who sends him to prepare for his own arrival on Christmas- 
eve. He is, in fact, some servant or dependent of the family, who 
engage him to undertake this office, and furnish him with requisite 
information. The children above eight or nine years old are let 
into the secret, which they faithfully keep. The younger children, 
as the time draws on, are often reminded that Christmas is coming, 
and that Pelznichel will be here, and, according as they are good or 
bad, will correct or reward them. If they have been bad children, 
he will use his rod ; if good, he will bring them nuts, and apples, 
and cakes, from the good Christ-child. All this they receive as 
gospel, and. with the greatest awe, and it has a strong effect upon 
them. They have a notion that Pelznichel, or the Christ-child, 
has his eyes upon them when they are not aware. That Pelznichel 
is going round the house at night and listening, and if they are 
naughty are sure to hear them ; or that the Christ-child with an 
ubiquitous knowledge sees all, and tells Pelznichel all about them. 
They look forward, therefore, with great awe and some anxiety 
to the appearance of Pelznichel. At length, some days before 
St. Nicholas' day, the father or mother says, " Well, children, now 
be very good, for Pelznichel is coming. He has sent word that 
he will be here on such an evening at six o'clock." 

On that evening, all is expectation, and scarcely is tea away, 
when there comes a ring at the door. All exclaim, " That must 
be Pelznichel \" The faces of the children are filled with awful 
expectation. All stand silent. Presently is heard a distant and 
mysterious ringing of bells ; a jingling of chains on the stone 
stairs. It becomes more distinct, — it approaches ; there is a heavy 
accompanying tread. There is a bustle in the passage, as if some 
matter of great moment was occurring. Voices are heard speaking, 
and amongst them, one deep and strange one. That is Pelz- 
nichel. The heavy tread, the ringing bells, the clanking chains, 
the bustle, and the voices are at the door; every eye is fixed on it. 
All are rooted in silent awe. The door opens, and in stalks the 
strange figure of Pelznichel — the Mumbo Jumbo of Germany, 
while behind him are seen all the assembled servants of the house- 
hold, full of curiosity, to witness what he will say and do. He 

M 



162 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

announces that he is sent by the good Christ-child to reward good 
children, and correct the bad. Every little heart beats with hope 
or fear. He addresses them by turns, beginning with the eldest. 
He asks them how they have pursued their studies; perhaps calls 
for their books ; pronounces an opinion on their progress, and by 
what he says, gives them intimations that he is aware of their 
general conduct, and of particular acts, good or evil, which fills 
them with surprise. If they have quarreled on their way to 
school; if they have been ungenerous or revengeful, they are sure 
to be told of it. He turns to each child in rotation, and adapts 
his rewards to the age and character of each. The very little ones 
often propitiate him by addressing him in a little rhyme the 
moment his eyes are turned upon them, and which the nurse has 
taught them for the purpose. 

Christ-kindschen komm ; 

Mach mich fromm ; 

Dass ich zu dir in Himmel komm. 

Which is literally, "Christ-child come; make me good, that I may 
come to thee in heaven." The aspect of a little child standing in 
awe and in faith before Pelznichel, and in the soft innocent tones 
of its voice making this simple petition in the truth of its heart, 
as I have seen it, is one of the most beautiful and affecting things 
in the world. 

Pelznichel talks sternly, and with menacing agitations of his 
rod, to those who have been stubborn, lazy, or disobedient, and 
commends those who have been otherwise. He hands the rod to 
the father, and commands him to use it when necessary, or he vows 
to come and use it himself. He seldom, however, proceeds on 
this occasion to any actual chastisement, as it is intended rather 
as a means of reformation, by instilling a salutary fear; and he 
adds that, on Christmas-eve, Christ-kindschen will come; and 
according as they behave, in the mean time, will reward them for 
good or ill. If for good, they will find many nice things on and 
under the Christmas-tree; if on the contrary, he will himself pro- 
bably be ordered to fetch them, and carry them into the woods in 
the mountains, and there to shut them up in a cave in the rocks, 
in the cold and darkness, where snakes hiss, owls hoot, toads and 
salamanders crawl, and fire runs about the ground. He generally 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 163 

ends by dealing out, from his bag, nuts, apples, and little cakes, to 
each of them, — and throwing others on the floor; while they are 
busy in scrambling for them, he disappears. 

In the country, Pelznichel goes about on a donkey, and actually 
often chastises the children of the peasantry. His visit in town 
or country has mostly a decisive effect. The parents remind the 
children of what he has said. They congratulate them on the 
commendations they have received; they remark on the faults he 
has related of them; and the fact that they are seen and observed 
often when they little think of it. They encourage them to begin 
seriously to correct and improve themselves, and to secure from 
Christ-kindschen a certain token of approbation of their conduct. 
The ensuing fortnight is a season of self- watchfulness and probation. 

The day arrives. The drawing-room, or in Germany, the 
saloon, is closed. Only the person who is entrusted with each 
one's secret is admitted to it, and has the key. All the young- 
people of the family, in fact, have been previously busy in pre- 
paring the tree, gilding walnuts and apples, and hanging them 
upon it; hanging on it also sundry little cakes, and figures of 
sugar-work of various colours. This has been the source of great 
delight to them. The tree has been set in its place, and then the 
room consigned to the one confidential person, who has laid out, 
in tasteful array, the presents intended for every person, each in a 
group by themselves. 

As soon as it is dark, and tea is over, the doors of the room 
are thrown open at the ringing of a bell, and a scene of splendour 
and beauty is revealed which produces one general exclamation of 
delight, and strikes, with a charming surprise, a person who has 
never witnessed such a one before. The whole room is filled with 
light. Opposite to you soars aloft the Christmas-tree in its fairy- 
land beauty; and around, extend tables covered with, and hung in 
front with drapery, often displaying great taste and elegance in its 
disposal and ornaments; and on these tables lie the various presents 
which have so long been secretly making and procuring. It would 
be difficult to describe either the wonder and admiration of the 
children, as they gaze on the whole brilliant scene; on the lovely 
tree, glittering with golden and silver fruit, seeming at the same 
time rich with innumerable flowers of various shapes and colours, 

m2 



164 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

and irradiated with lights. The mutual surprise and pleasure of 
the different members of the family, as they are shewn what 
presents are there laid for them, and hear from whom each comes. 
The course of explanations that goes on; the sudden, recognitions 
of the cause which has prompted such and such presents from 
such and such persons; the pleasant amazement; the thanks; the 
laughter; the tears of affection that come into the eyes of the 
different members of the happy family, are more readily imagined 
than described. 

The family with whom we then lived at Heidelberg, as is the 
custom in Germany, as in Scotland, under one common roof, 
though occupying different stories or flats, as the Scotch, and 
stocks as the Germans, call them, undertook to arrange the whole 
for us; that our children might participate in a real German 
Christmas; and every thing was managed as I have described. 
Our children, up to our eldest boy of ten years of age, were as 
completely influenced by it as German children could be. Though 
the two elder boys, of ten and seven, had strong inklings and 
glimpses of the real nature of Pelznichel and Christ-kindschen ; yet 
they were not the less affected by the presence of Pelznichel. Even 
the eldest, a sharp and penetrating lad, shewed a face of real awe 
and of wonder, when Pelznichel informed him of certain passages 
or pranks on his way through the city to school, to the truth 
of which he testified by his astonishment on hearing them thus 
stated; and of the manner of Pelznichel's discovering of them, he 
could by no means form a conception. Even he ran and fetched 
his school-books when Pelznichel asked for them, and shewed a 
strong anxiety to point out the weekly good certificates given by 
his master. But the little fat boy, of three years old, looking up 
with his 

Christ-kindschen komm; 

Mach mich fromm 

Dass ich zu dir in Himmel komm ; 

was most touching. 

Our drawing-room having been thus prepared and opened; I 
may here more particularly speak of it. At the farther end of tin- 
room, next to the wall, rose the Christmas-tree in all its sheen. 
From it, coming away on each side, in a crescent form, went the 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 165 

tables, and then stretched down each side of the room, draped, as 
I have said, and covered with the various presents. Along the 
fronts of the tables burned no less than seventy small wax-lights, 
rising out of a border of green moss. Other lights shed their 
radiance from the chandelier, and in the tree burned many little 
coloured tapers, like stars, altogether a hundred and twenty lights. 
On the front of the table on which the tree stood, was disposed a 
festooning of scarlet cloth on the white drapery; and the whole 
scene was, on its opening, a perfect fairyland of light and love- 
liness. 

As for presents to and from every one, they covered the whole 
two ranges of tables; the room was like a bazaar. One was quite 
surprised at the number of things as they lay all in one display. 
There were muffs and boas, and even dresses; beautifully worked 
cushions, beautiful purses of silk and bead- work; fine worked 
collars; many elegant little knick-knacks; memorandum -books, ball- 
books, boxes of that blue-and-white enameled composition resem- 
bling china, which figured at that time so conspicuously in the 
German shops. There were books, a reading-desk, paper-knives, 
slippers of various kinds and colours, warm winter gloves, draw- 
ings, portfolios, and many similar things. There also lay, in most 
tempting order, all the presents for the children. A magic-lantern, 
various games in boxes, warm fur gloves, coloured engravings; and 
for the two youngest a host of dolls, cattle, and other things, which 
excited the utmost delight. It was pleasant to see the eyes of 
wonder which they opened on the whole scene; on the brilliance of 
the place, the splendid tree, the various articles, but, above all, on 
their own toys. Each had to be taken up and admired, and laid 
down and taken up again. But the prettiest sight of all was to see 
the stout little fellow of three years set out his gifts of kitchen 
utensils in the middle of the floor, and sitting down amongst them, 
forget all about him in arranging and re-arranging them, pretending 
to cook and make coffee in true childish style, till the wonders of 
the magic-lantern called him away, and then to go off to bed, 
happier than any prince, with a load of toys under each arm, to 
stand by his bed and greet him on waking. 

The Christmas-tree was truly superb. It was, as the best trees 
generally are, a young spruce fir, possessing a fine dark green, a 



166 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

distinctness of branches, and a graceful tapering figure. It had been 
got out of the woods and fixed into its frame by a neighbouring 
peasant, who entered into its preparation with the spirit of a child, 
and had been for weeks before manufacturing animals of clay for 
its garden, and drying them by the kitchen stove. They were in 
the true quaint style of those sold by the country people. Two 
stags of chocolate colour, with gilded horns; a funny sheep; two 
birds representing, however ill, storks — one silvered over; a dog, 
and two shepherds with their tall staves, and arrayed in purple and 
blue, with green hats. All these were half lost in a wilderness of 
moss and heath, or issuing out of a wood formed of the twigs of the 
fir-tree. On the pales of this enclosure were stuck gilded almonds 
and nuts; and on the tree itself, a rich crop of very various fruits. 
Gold and silver walnuts depended from the boughs; silver apples; 
cakes of different colours and forms, like so many strange but 
beautiful flowers; coloured confections and fruits; and musical 
instruments, as trumpets, guitars, harps; coloured hearts crowned 
with gilded crosses, and other devices. Many human and other 
figures shewed themselves amongst the foliage ; dames in different 
costumes, babies on swaddling-boards, children riding on dogs, etc. 
An angel with golden wings and crown fluttered from the end of a 
bough; a student sate smoking on the side of the stem; and various 
little red tapers, attached to the ends of different branches, glowed 
like so many starry flowers, and completed the beauty of the whole. 
It was just such a tree as one might expect to come upon in the 
forest of an enchanted land, and to find described in the lays of 
those old minstrels who, like Thomas of Ercildoune, were accus- 
tomed to wander there. I have been the more minute in the 
description of the whole of this scene, that my Euglish readers may 
have a complete idea of it. 

We see in all that belongs to the Christmas-tree and the Christ- 
kindschen a relic of the simple ages of the church, when ancient 
legends were believed in as gospel. The stag with its gilded horns 
is the stag of legendary tradition, which was the first earthly 
creature to perceive the presence of the angels who appeared by 
night to the shepherds of Bethlehem to announce to them the birth 
of the Saviour. The pious stag is said to have kneeled down at the 
holy vision, and accordingly we find it in almost all old representa- 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 167 

tions of scenes in the life of Christ. It is, moreover, looked upon 
in Germany as an emblem of whatever is mild, gentle, and good. 

The Christ-kindschen is also the creature of these legendary 
times. One is at first puzzled to comprehend exactly what the 
Germans mean by the Christ-child; that is, precisely what rank 
and identity they assign him. If you ask them if they mean it 
actually for Christ, they say, yes : yet I have seen a German 
merrily propose to drink the Christ-child's health — an irreverence 
by no means in their natures or their intentions. You soon dis- 
cover that the Christ-kindschen is no other than the Christ of the 
old legends — Christ in his boyhood; — Christ just as — without any 
pressing thought of his great mission, but full of his divine nature 
— he used to play with the other children of Bethlehem, and often 
surprised them with his supernatural endowments. Such repre- 
sents him that story where, playing with the children of the neigh- 
bours at making sparrows of clay, his sparrow as soon as completed 
became alive, and flew away. Such was he, as described in that old 
carol where he asks his mother leave to go and play with the 
neighbouring children, who refuse to play with him on this plea: 

Nay, nay, we are lords' and ladies' sons; 

Thou art meaner than us all ; 
Thou art but a silly fair maid's child, 

Born in an oxen's stall. 

Wherefore, informing his mother of this insult offered him: 

" Then," said she, " go down to yonder town, 

As far as the holy well, 
And there take up these infants' souls, 

And dip them deep in hell." 

" Oh, no! oh, no !" sweet Jesus then said, 

" Oh, no ! that never can be ; 
For there are many of these infants' souls 

Crying out for the help of me." 

This is exactly the Christ-child of Germany. Still in his infant 
form, full of love for all children, he watches over them, cares for 
them, and rewards them when good. By a stretch of divine power 
equal to or greater than any miracle of old, he is supposed, in the 
simple heart of childhood, on one eve throughout all the wide 
empire of Germany, through all the dwellings of its populous cities 
and innumerable villages, to crown the Christmas-tree with his 



168 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

annual gifts. Many an imaginative child on that night, like 
Quintus Fixlein, lies in wait to catch a glimpse of his glittering 
wings, and half persuades himself that he has seen them. 

It must be confessed that, in the minds of the common people, 
very confused notions of Christ-kindschen exist. At one time he 
is mentioned as a child, then as a grown person, and, again, is- 
often called she, as if feminine. This confusion has probably 
arisen from this circumstance. In some parts of Germany, par- 
ticularly in Rhenish Bavaria and the Catholic states, Christ-kind- 
schen is actually represented as a living person on Christmas-eve. 
It is Christ-kindschen himself, who summonses the family to enter 
the room and see the spectacle, by ringing his bell, or striking on 
the door with his rod. On entering, he is seen standing by the 
Christmas-tree, with his rod in one hand, and his bell in the 
other. On this occasion, it is generally a young woman who 
represents the Christ-kindschen, dressed in white, with a gilt crown 
and wings, and with a long white veil ornamented with gold. It 
is thought by the parents, that the presence of Christ-kindschen 
himself will more impressively affect the children, those amongst 
them whose previous conduct has not been good being forbidden 
to enter the room. Others, however, and justly, deem it making 
too free with the sacred character of Christ, to introduce him in 
this manner, and the custom is, therefore, far from being general. 
In other places, Christ-kindschen and Knecht Ruprecht go along 
the streets together, and from house to house. In the descriptions 
of Christmas-eve by Richter and by Coleridge, as quoted in " The 
Rural Life of England," the Christmas-tree is by one said to be 
birch, in the other yew. Possibly this may be the fact in some 
parts of Germany, or it may be in one case a mistake of the trans- 
lator, in the other of the author; the tree is generally, if not always, 
of fir. 

The poor, in their small dwellings, must find it somewhat diffi- 
cult to set up the tree and their gifts, unknown to the children. 
That was probably the reason that formerly it was first exhibited 
to the children on Christmas morning before daylight, having beta 
set up after they were in bed. We are told, however, that it is 
every year becoming more common for the poor to bring out their 
tree in the evening, the children being sent out of the way on 



OK CHRISTMAS-EVE. 169 

some pretext or another while it is done. And in truth, there, 
as all over the world, the gifts of the poor are soon displayed. It is 
quite affecting to see the little simple things which the poor people 
will buy as Christmas gifts for their children. Little dolls of a 
few kreutzers in value, some even of the mere cost of an English 
penny. As you pass their cottages in an evening for a fortnight 
afterwards, you may see by the lights within, the little tree with 
a few apples and little figures hung on it, standing on a table, and 
the children around it admiring it; if there be a baby, some of 
them holding it up to see the precious sight. 

But not only the poor in their cottages have their Christmas- 
tree; in schools and other institutions it is set up. A prettier or 
more affecting sight we have seldom seen than the celebration of 
Christmas-day in the Infant school at Heidelberg. Here, at three 
o'clock in the afternoon, were the parents and children, the patrons 
and friends of the school, assembled. Upwards of eighty little 
boys and girls, all under six years of age, were seated on low 
forms in the middle of the school, opposite to the master's desk, 
in front of which, on a raised platform, stood four tall Christmas- 
trees, or as they called them sugar-trees, decorated with the usual 
appendages of cakes, apples, etc., and at their feet stood a row of 
tapers ready to be kindled. 

Besides these, were various coloured engravings; an excellent 
one of Christ Blessing the Little Children ; a kind of erection of 
straw-work containing stages, on one of which was a dancing-bear, 
on another, a tournament with knights riding, with candles burning 
all over it. These figures revolved by means of a perpendicular 
spindle, having attached to its top a sort of fan, like the ventilator 
of a window, which was moved by the warm air ascendiug from 
the candles. There were many funny little three-legged pots of true 
German fashion set on the platform amongst the lights, a gift to the 
children from some one to amuse them in their school play-hours. 
To the right sate the spectators, many ladies and gentlemen of 
the place; to the left, the parents of the children. The master 
lit up the tapers on the trees, and the row of them at their feet, 
and a murmur of delight rose from the little troop of children. 
The blinds had all been drawn down to exclude as much of the 
exterior light as possible, and the scene was very bright. The 



170 CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 

* 

master read from his desk an address prepared for the occasion, 
and after the little scholars had sung a Christmas-hymn or # two 
very prettily, they were dismissed, one by one, with their pinafores 
full of toys, good warm articles of clothing, and a quantity of cakes 
and apples, the former of which had been sent as a Christmas gift 
to them by a worthy baker. It was pleasant to see the delighted 
faces of all present; the eager looks of the parents as their children 
came forward to receive their presents; and how the mothers, as 
they advanced towards the door, snatched them up, and carried 
them off, gifts and altogether. 

Even inmates of the asylums, as if they were at home amongst 
their children, are treated to a Christmas-tree, and the brilliance of 
Christmas-eve. It is the great sacred festival of Germany, and is 
much more regarded than Sunday. On Sunday, great numbers of 
shops in most towns are open, things are brought home from 
different makers as on another day, and ladies sit knitting in com- 
pany as usual. On Christmas-day nearly all shops are closed, and 
even ladies refrain from knitting; and all is solemn and decorous. 
Two days are made holidays, and the tree is not pulled down till 
New-year's day, when the children rifle its treasures, and different 
members of the family frequently keep some particular article from 
it as a remembrance. The solemnity of Christmas is also further 
marked, not only by the increased services in the churches from 
Advent to Christmas, but also by balls and other public amusements 
being laid aside during that period. 

We may close this article by two pieces from the Kinder - 
Lieder, or Children's Songs of the Germans, illustrative of the 
nature of Christ-kindschen. 

KINDERLEID ZU WEIGHNACHTEN. 

Gott's VVunder, lieber Bu, Der alte Zimmermann 

Geh, horch ein wenig zu. Den schaun wir alle an, 

Was ich dir will erzahlen, Der hat dem kleinen Kindelein 

Wasgeschah in aller Fruh. Veil gutes angethan. 

Da geh ich Liber ein Haid Er hat es so erkusst, 

Wo man die Schaflein weidt, Es war ein wahre Lust, 

Da kamm ein kleiner Bu gerennt, Er schaflt das Brod, isst selber nicht, 

Ich hab ihn all mein Tag nicht kennt. 1st audi sein rechter Vater nicht. 

Gott's Wunder, lieber Bu, Gott's Wunder, lieber Bu, 

Geh, horch ein wenig zu. Geh, horch ein wenig zu ! 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 171 

■ 
Iliitt ich nur dran gedenkt, 

Dem Kind hatt ich was geschenkt ; 

Zwei Aepfel hab ich bei mir gchabt, 

Er hat mich freundlich angelacht. 

Gott's Wunder, lieber Bu, 
Geh, horch ein wenig zu ! 

This old carol, in which, in the manner of the old painters, 
different times and persons are curiously mixed, may also be given 
in a prose and pretty literal translation. "God's wonder! dear 
boy, listen to me awhile. I will tell thee something, — something 
which happened in the early times. As I go over a heath where 
shepherds feed their flocks, came running a little boy. I had 
never known him in all my life. God's wonder, dear boy, listen ! 
The old carpenter that we are all accustomed to gaze at, he has 
done the little child much good. He has kissed it, so that it was a 
pleasure to see it. He earns its bread, eats not himself, and yet 
he is not the child's true father. Had I only thought of it, I 
would have given the child a gift. I had two apples by me, and 
he smiled kindly on me. God's wonder, dear boy, listen ! " 

The next is one of the most beautiful productions of the 
popular poet, Riickert : — 

DES FItEMDEN KINDES HEILGER CHRIST. 
Es laiift ein fremdes Kind *' Lasst mich denn Niemand ein 

Am Abend vor Weighnachten Und gbnnt mir auch ein Fleckschen ? 

Durch eine Stadt geschwind In all den Hausenreihen 

Die Lichter zu betrachten 1st denn fur mich kein Eckschen 

Die angeziindet sind. Und ware es noch so klein? 

Es stehet vor jedem Haus " Lasst mich denn Neimand ein? 

Und sieht die hellen Raiime, Ich will ja selbst nichts haben ; 

Die drinnen schaun heraus Ich will ja nur am Schein 

Die lampenvollen Ba'ume; Der fremden Weighnachts-gaben 

Weh wirds ihm uberaus. Mich laben ganz allein." 

Das Kindlein weint und spricht : Es klopft an Thiir und Thor, 

" Ein jedes Kind hat heute An Fenster und an Laden; 

Ein Baiimschen und ein Licht, Doch Niemand tritt hervor 

Und hat dran seine Freud e Das Kindlein einzuladen ; 

Nur bios ich armes Wicht. Sic haben drin kein Ohr. 

" An der Geschwister Hand Ein jeder Vater lenkt 

Als ich daheim gesessen, Den Sinn auf seine Kinder; 

Hat es mir auch gebrannt ; Die Mutter sie beschenkt, 

Doch hier bin ich vergessen Denkt sonst nichts mehr nichts minder ; 

In diesem fremden Land. Ans Kindlein Niemand dcnkt. 



172 



CELEBRATION OF WEIGHNACHT, 



" O lieber heilger Christ, 
Nicht Mutter und nicht Vater 
Hab' icb wenn's du's nicht bist ! 
O sey du mein Berather, 
Weil man mich hier vergisst." 

Das Kindlein reibt die Hand; 
Sie ist von Frost erstarret; 
Es kriecht in sein Gewand, 
Und in dem Giisslein harret 
Den Blick hinaus gewand. 

Da kommt mit einem Licht, 
Dtuchs Giisslein hergewallet, 
In weissem Kleide schlicht, 
Ein ander Kind ; — wie schallet 
Es lieblich da es spricht. 

" Ich bin der heilge Christ ; 
War auch ein Kind vordessen, 
Wie du ein Kindlein bist; 
Ich will dicli nicht vergessen, 
Wenn alles dich vergisst. 

" Ich bin mit meinem Wort 
Bei allem gleichermassen, 
Ich biete meinen Hort, 
So gut hier auf den Strassen, 
Wie in den Zimmer dort. 



" Ich will dir deinen Baum, 
Fremd Kind hier lassen schimmern, 
Auf diesem offnen Raum, 
So schon, dass die in Zimmern 
So sehb'n seyn sollen kaum," 

Da deutet mit der Hand 
Christkindlein auf zum Himmel, 
Und droben lenchtend stand 
Ein Baum voll Sterngewimmel. 
Vielastig ausgespannt. 

So fern, und doch so nah, 
Wie funkelten die Kerzen ! 
Wie ward dem Kindlein da ! 
Demn fremden, still zu Herzen, 
Da's seinen Christbaum sah. 

Es ward ihm wie ein Traum ; 
Da langten hergebogen 
Englein herab vom Baum 
Zum Kindlein, das sie zogen 
Hinauf zu lichtem Raum. 

Das fremde Kindlein ist 
Zur Heimath jetzt gekehret 
Bei seinem heilgen Christ, 
Und was hier wird bescheret, 
Es dorten leicht vergisst. 



It would be next to impossible to give a fair poetical translation 
of this beautiful poem. Its simple melody and its simple pathos 
would alike task the most masterly hand to convey them into 
another tongue; we shall therefore content ourselves with presenting 
the matter of it in very literal prose, and leave those who are 
acquainted with the language of the original to appreciate its full 
excellence. 

THE STRANGER CHILES HOLY-CHRIST. 

" There runs a stranger-child swiftly through the city on 
Christmas-eve, to see the lights that are kindled. He stops before 
every house, and sees the bright rooms in which stand clearly out 
the lampful trees. Woe is to him everywhere ! The child weeps 
and says, ' To-day, every child has its little tree and its light, and 
has therein its joy; I alone have none. When I sate at home, holding 
the hands of brothers and sisters, one burned there for me also; 
but here, in this strange land, I am forgotten. Will no one let me 



OR CHRISTMAS-EVE. 173 

come in, and afford me just one little standing-place? In all these 
rows of houses is there then for me no corner, were it ever so small? 
Will no one let me in ? I will ask nothing for myself; I will only 
refresh myself with the gay appearance of the foreign Christmas 
gifts.' He 'knocks at door and gateway, at window and at shutter, 
but no one comes forth to ask in the little child; within, they have 
no ear. Every father fixes his thoughts on his own children; the 
mother distributes the gifts amongst them; she thinks of nothing 
more, nothing less than that — no one thinks of the little child. 
( Oh ! dear and holy Christ/ he exclaimed, ' I have neither father 
lor mother, if thou art not that to me. Oh ! be my counsellor, for 
here I am forgotten of every one/ 

" He rubs his hands ; they are stiff with the frost ; he shrinks 
shivering in his garments; he lingers in the little bye-lane, his 
looks directed towards heaven. There comes up the little street, 
waving a light before him, another child, in smooth white raiment. 
How sweetly sounds his voice as he speaks ! ' I am the holy Christ, 
and formerly was I a child as thou art now. Though all besides 
forget thee, I will not forget thee. My word is for all alike. I 
offer my protection as well in the streets here as there in the rooms. 
Thy light, little stranger, I will cause to shine here in the open 
space so fair, that scarcely shall those in the rooms be so fair/ 

"Then waved the Christ-child his hand towards heaven, and 
forth stood, glittering, overspread with many branches, a tree, 
glorious with a host of stars. So distant and yet so near — how 
sparkled the lights! How felt the child then! Still stood the 
little stranger, still at heart, as there he saw his Christmas-tree ! 
It was like a dream to him. Little angels bending down from the 
tree, stretched their hands to him, and drew him up into the 
shining space. The little stranger-child has returned home to his 
holy Christ, and easily is there forgotten how things here are 
awarded/' 

Such are the Christmas customs of Germany. It must be 
confessed that there is something very amiable, poetical, and beau- 
tiful in them; but the English mind will not, at the same time, be 
able to avoid feeling a repugnance to the making so free with the 
person of Christ, and still more to the delusions that are thus 
practised, and falsehoods practically taught to the children. That 



174 CELEBRATION OF CHRISTMAS-EVE. 

this is the Christ-child; that he brings all these gifts from heaven; 
that Pelznichel is sent by him, and so on — the moment a child 
grows old enough to see through this, he must begin to think that 
his parents care little for the truth, and be in danger of adopting 
an idea that he need not much regard it himself. In fact, at a 
certain age, the parents are obliged to let the children into the 
secret, and to take them, as it were, into a partnership of imposing 
on their younger brothers and sisters. This is very bad; and when 
the next step to this in domestic education, is to stuff the young 
mind with a whole host of Marchen, household legends of a similar 
kind, we must fear that truth cannot be very sacred amongst them. 
And is it? Our experience is, that it is far from being so much so 
as it should be. Whoever has looked through their literature 
must have felt surprised at the freedom with which the heroes of 
the stories by the most celebrated masters, Goethe for instance, 
tell any kind of fib to help them out of scrapes. Whoever has seen 
much of private life in Germany, will, we fear, have experienced a 
similar surprise. Spite of the national boasts of the Deutsche 
Treue und Deutsche Wahrheit, German faithfulness and truth, this 
is a fact which merits the most serious attention of a people so 
proud of their improvements in education; and it seems wonderful 
that it has not struck them, that all the essential and beautiful of 
this Christmas practice will remain independent of these fictions. 
The tree may still be set up; the children may still look forward 
to finding under it presents for the good, and it will be just as 
delightful to their young hearts that these are the testimonies of 
parental and household affection, as if they suppose them brought 
by a Christ-kindschen. If they prize the wonder which such 
deceptions bring, it is still worth while asking whether that 
momentary wonder may not be purchased too dear; that is, by the 
lasting injury to truthfulness. All that wonder too may be 
imparted by relating to the children at these times, what were the 
legends and the fancies of their ancestors, for the imagination is 
perhaps more delighted with what is presented to it as an ideal 
of the past, than as an actuality of the present. 



©MAPTil^ 



NEW-YEARS EVE. 



New-Year's Day is kept in Germany as a thorough holiday. 
There is service at the churches; business is at a stand; and like 
Christmas-day, it is far more observed than a Sunday. New- 
year's eve is perhaps the most merry time of the German year. 
In almost every house are parties met to conduct the old year out 
with dance and sport. About five o'clock in the evening, the 
church bells ring, and guns are fired off in all directions. In this 
respect every town is filled with as much noise of firing, and smell 
of gunpowder, as the night of the fifth of November used to be in 
England. The practice has been forbidden by the authorities; but, 
except in the chief cities, the authorities are not over active, and 
the prohibition is little regarded. The police go about the streets; 
but in all ordinary towns these are so fat and sleepy that it is only 
necessary to be quiet just where they are, and everywhere where 
they are not, are guns and pistols discharging. 

It is considered a compliment for young men to go and fire a 
salute in front of the houses of their friends. In the University 
towns, the students, a little before twelve o'clock, headed by their 
clubs, proceed with torches to the house of the Prorector, and by a 
volley of fire-arms, and a loud vivat, announce the termination of 
the year, and wish him a happy new one. The Prorector appears 
at his window, makes there a short speech in acceptance of their 
compliment, drinks a happy new year to them, and frequently 
concludes by flinging the glass down upon the pavement, that it 
may never be used on any other occasion. With loud vivats they 
echo his good wishes, and march away to pay the same compliment 
to a few others of their most popular professors. The scene is wild 



176 new-year's eve. 

and peculiar. The troop of students, every one with his torch, 
forming a train, headed by the seniors of their clubs, in their respec- 
tive costumes; joined by as many other students as please, with 
wild looks, flying hair, and torches flaming in the stormy winds, 
and followed by a crowd of the miscellanea of the city, marching 
through the wintry streets at midnight; with shouts, and scattered 
discharges of fire-arms, — is strange and picturesque. At a distance 
you see the light of their torch-train, confined by the narrow streets, 
stream up into the air like the tail of a comet, while the successive 
discharges of guns flash across it like lightning. 

Within doors all is mirth and enjoyment. There are games 
played peculiar to this eve. New-year's eve is probably acted in 
a witty and ludicrous charade, which occasions much merriment. 
In one party, where we were, the young men made the charade 
New- Year's Night. They represented the students drinking and 
singing, from the Burschen Song-book, a New-year's-night song. 
They then acted them, as pretty well primed with punch and glee- 
wine they rushed into the streets. The watchman, against whom 
they ran, raised his staff, and blew his horn, and said his rhyme, 
but in vain, being glad to get away from them. Then the scene 
changed to the room of one of the professors, who sat at his tabic 
waiting for the arrival of the students' torch-train, pretending to 
be very calm and philosophical, taking up a book to read, but 
all the while very fidgety lest the Burschen should not pay him 
that compliment, or should go to others before him. At length, a 
volley was discharged before the house. He started up joyfully, 
exclaiming, "Aha! they are there!" threw up the window, made 
his speech, and pledging the youngsters, flung his glass into 
the street. 

There is plenty of dancing going on. Glee-wine, a sort of 
negus, and punch, are brought in after supper, and just before 
twelve o'clock. Every one is on the watch to win the New- Year 
from the others; that is, to announce the New-Year first. Accord- 
ingly, the instant the city bell is heard to commence tolling, "Prosst 
Neu Jahr!" starts from every one's lips; and happy is he who is 
acknowledged to have made the exclamation first, and to have won 
from all the others the New-Year. In every house, at that moment, 
all over the country, is shouted " Prosst Neu Jahr!" prosst being 



177 

no German word, but a contraction of the Latin prosit. On one 
occasion, having retired to rest, our servants assembled at our 
room-door, and woke us, in order to cry " Prosst Neu Jake ! " On 
the following morning, every one that meets you salutes you with 
the same exclamation. 

With the glee-wine are brought in, on a waiter, the New-year 
wishes of the family and its friends. These are written in verse, 
generally on very ornamental gilt note-paper, and sealed up. When 
the " Prosst Neu Jahr" has passed, and all have drunk to one 
another a Happy New Year, with a general touching of glasses, 
these are opened and read. For the most part they are without 
signatures, and occasion much guessing and joking. Under 
cover of these anonymous epistles, good hints and advice are often 
administered by parents and friends. Numbers of people, who 
never on any other occasion write a verse, now try their hands at 
one; and those who do not find themselves sufficiently inspired, 
present those ornamental cards of which I have spoken under 
Christmas, and which have all kinds of wishes, to suit all kinds 
of tastes and circumstances. These are to be purchased of all 
qualities and prices, and those sent by friends and lovers generally 
appear on New-year's day, and are signed or not as suits the 
purpose of the sender. 

After the New-year's wishes have been read, a game of very 
old standing on this occasion is introduced, a game known to most 
people in England acquainted with old fashions; that of the flour, 
the water, and the keys. Three plates are set on a round table in the 
middle of the room. In one is flour, in another water, in the third 
a bunch of keys. The young unmarried people are by turns blind- 
folded, and walking round the table, pitch upon one of the plates. 
These have, of course, been shifted while the person about to try 
his or her chance has been under the operation of blindfolding, so 
as to occupy quite different relative positions to what they did 
before; or are sometimes shifted and then replaced, so that the 
person naturally supposing that they have been changed, shall try 
to avoid the unlucky ones by aiming at a new point, and thus 
shall actually have a greater chance of passing the lucky one. The 
lucky one is that containing the keys. Whoever gets that, is to 
be married to the person of his or her choice; he who pushes his 



178 new-year's eve. 

fingers into the flour is to marry a widow, or vice versa, and he 
who dips into the water shall not be married at all. This simple 
lottery occasions its share of merriment, and then goes on again 
the dancing. 

With the punch and glee-wine came in also one of those large 
ornamented and nice cakes for which the Germans are so famous, 
and large cakes of gingerbread in the shape of hearts, with almonds 
stuck inthem. The se make an indispensable part of the enter- 
tainment of New-year's eve; and accordingly, you see them reared 
in and before the bakers' windows, and on stalls, in thousands; 
some of them at least half-a-yard tall, and a foot wide. These 
gingerbread hearts are in much esteem also at Christmas; and, 
indeed, on many occasions. In almost all cases, the German 
gingerbread, which is peculiar, being mixed with honey, and often 
flavoured with aniseeds, and is in no respect to be compared to 
the delicious gingerbread of England, assumes the shape of hearts, 
and at fairs and wakes, as we have observed, after the national 
custom, is, being much gilt and coloured, made a medium of love 
and sentiment by the appendage of verses. On this Eve the ser- 
vants of every house, by right of ancient and indefeasible custom, 
have their feast of punch and their great gingerbread hearts, each 
servant one. 

The Catholics, according to their custom, close the old year 
and open the new one in their churches. They have a sermon, 
as twelve approaches; in many places the lights are extinguished, 
leaving alone, conspicuous, a huge cross, reaching from the bottom 
to near the top of the church, illuminated with lamps. When 
twelve has struck, an anthem of thanksgiving strikes up, and mass 
is celebrated. 

In Germany, the servants of tradesmen come for New-year's 
gifts, as they do for Christmas-boxes with us; and your baker sends 
you a huge cake, like a couple of great serpents wreathed into two 
connected circles, perhaps originally intended to represent the old 
year and the new. 




g >3 & [p T I & XKWo 



SLEDGING. 



The Germans, as they have sharp winters, contrive to enliven them 
as much as possible. They have at their Museums, or public 
buildings of amusement and resort, balls and concerts, generally 
six of each during the season, free to all subscribers. They have, 
besides other public balls and concerts, plenty of private ones. 
Their calendar furnishes them with successive days and times of 
festivity; as Christmas, New Year's Day, Three Kings' Day, 
respondent to our Twelfth Day, Fastnacht, which comes just 
before Lent, and, as in Italy, is a great time of feasting and 
masking before the severities of Lent commence. Family parties, 
with dancing and simple games, make this gloomy and cold 
season pass cheerily. They have, every few families of congenial 
tastes, their Kr'anzchen, or literally, little garlands. These are 
circulating visits on fixed days. These meetings are held once 
a week at the houses of those who compose them, in rotation. 
At these they take tea, and talk, read, of course knit, and dance 
or play, as the taste or age of the parties may dictate. They 
have too their Sing Vereine and Lieder-Tafel, or Singing Unions 
and Song Tables, where the young of both sexes perfect them- 
selves in singing. Some of these in the chief cities are numerous, 
especially that in Berlin, where the young people of the most 
respectable families assemble in a hall presented to them by the 



180 



SLEDGING. 



king, to the number of three hundred, and sing some of the 
finest compositions in splendid style. There is nothing in Germany 
that a stranger should endeavour more zealously to be present at 
than the Berlin Sing Verein. In large cities, and where literature 
prevails, there are given by certain persons philosophic and 
sestethic tea-parties, where the company listen to the reading of 
original compositions, and discuss the merits of new books, and 
new candidates for fame. Chocolate-parties are sometimes given 
in the afternoon, and ladies have occasionally their Frauen-Ges- 
chellschaften, or Ladies' Meetings, where only ladies meet, and 
over their knitting, talk over the scandal of the day, and the bad- 
ness of their servants. As the German ladies are generally rather 
accomplished in music and French than extensively read, English 
ladies who have attended such parties describe them as the very 
perfection of gossip and dullness. Yet with all these means put 
together they derive on the winter much to their own content. 

Out of the very inclemency of the season, like the northern 
nations generally, they contrive to extract enjoyment. Their 
skating and sledging then come on, and furnish much excitement, 
many parties, and plenty of gaiety. As soon as the rivers are frozen 
over sufficiently, which is often in a single night, the ice becomes 
alive with swarms of skaters. The fishermen can now no longer 
use their boats, and thus earn their livelihood from the stream; 
they employ themselves, therefore, in clearing away any lumps 
from the ice, sweep the snow from it as it falls; sweep also the 

ice-dust which the skaters grind up, 

and furnish chairs set upon sledges 
for young skaters to practise with, 
and for expert ones to push the ladies 
in. The fishermen remunerate them- 
selves by a contribution from all those 
who skate, of three kreutzers, one 
penny English, and by letting out 
their chairs at the rate of two-pence 
the hour. Ladies are very fond of 
being pushed along in these chairs; and parties are made, of 
young people, in which the gentlemen propel the ladies at a great 
rate, and make a very gay scene on the ice. 




" "- '.- ; 



- *'o**- 



SLEDGING. 181 

In the winter of 1840, which wc spent at Heidelberg, the frost 
set in with snch severity early in December that in a few days the 
Neckar was frozen over, so that you could walk on it, and so was 
the Rhine. The ice was soon eighteen inches thick, and the frost 
continued till the beginning of the new year, without snow. The 
thermometer was at 35° Fahrenheit below the freezing point, and 
the dust on the roads was worse than in summer, and so fine that 
it filled the clothes of the ladies so that it was unpleasant for them 
to go out. But the people seemed to care little for it. Expecting 
it, they made early preparations for winter. At the first approach 
of cold weather you are surprised to see men and women walking in 
their great cloaks with many capes, though the ordinary class of 
women still go with their heads bare. The warm articles, as furs 
and felt, and woollen over- shoes and gloves, exposed for sale in the 
autumn fairs and in the shops, told you beforehand what to expect. 
All the brunnens, i. e. fountains and pumps, were carefully defended 
by clothing them with straw. All shrubs that might suffer from 
the weather were tied up in straw too. Straw was strewed over the 
garden-beds to protect the roots and bulbs of plants from the frost, 
and tan also placed in great quantities about all fountains and wells 
to secure them. Straw was stuffed into all cellar openings, and into 
every place where cold could enter. It was tied and wrapped in neat 
rolls, and laid on the outer window-sills, so as to cover the nick at 
the bottom of the casement, and other rolls covered with cloth of 
scarlet and other gay colours were also laid on the inside of the 
windows. In the best houses, especially in the north, they have 
double windows to keep out the cold. 

It was made evident before his arrival that Jack Frost was here 
a very formidable fellow; and when he came, truly he came in his 
strength. Then, even the poor women, though they would not 
entirely cover their heads with caps and bonnets, were compelled 
to tie a folded handkerchief from under the chin to the top of the 
head, so as to protect in some degree their throats and ears. Then 
might be seen on boys and men huge gloves of fur; in the case of 
the boys, with true German caution, secured by a cord passing over 
their shoulders, so that they might not be laid down or lost. 
When they pulled them off, they hung dangling on each side of 
their waists; and when they had them on, they looked funny 



182 SLEDGING. 

enough, with the strings on the stretch, seeming to support both 
gloves and arms, as if some accident had paralysed them. 

When snow comes, the scene changes. The moment that it 
becomes trodden down hard on the roads, all the world is on 
sledges. Sledges come forth from their year-long hiding-places, 
and stand before the houses ready to be hired. On the road are 
sledges of all sorts and sizes, from the largest to the smallest, from 
the smartest to the simplest. Some of them, especially in some of 
the chief cities, are very gay indeed. They are of various shapes, 
but resemble the bodies of chariots, phaetons, gigs, etc., set on 
sledge-bars. Some of them are very gaily, and others very gaudily 
painted; richly cushioned, and furnished with aprons of the 
shaggy skins of wild beasts, as bears, wolves, foxes, and deer. 
Their sledge-bars sweep up in a fine curve, and meet high before, 
bearing on their summit some figure — a pine-apple, a fir-cone, a 
lion's head, an eagle with outspread wings, or a human figure. The 
horses are covered with cloths of gay colours, which are stitched 
all over with little bells, and bells are generally hung on the 
sledges too. 

Besides the handsome ones, many an old-fashioned affair comes 
forth, down to the bauer's or peasant's sledge, which is his old 
wicker-basket wagon-body, on a few poles rudely knocked together. 
Every thing that is a vehicle of conveyance becomes a sledge. 
Wheelbarrows disappear, and become sledge-barrows. Every thing 
that was before carried, now becomes drawn. Tubs, baskets, 
bundles, all are on sledges, and are travelling the streets and roads. 
Every boy has his sledge too, made of a few boards nailed together, 
on which he is flying down the hill sides with the utmost velocity. 
Wherever there is a bit of a descent in a street, or in the country, 
down it are going little sledges with one or more children on each 
of them. Boys and girls draw one another along the streets and 
highways at full speed on these little vehicles; everywhere you see 
them in motion, and they afford a world of amusement. If a heap 
of rubbish has been thrown to some outside of the town, or by the 
river side, covered with snow it becomes a sledge-bank for the 
lads; and they go down places so steep and uneven, that you 
expect to see them every moment thrown head over heels; but no 
such thing — away they go as light and free as birds on the wing' 



SLEDGIXC. 



183 



and when they get to the end of their course, pick up their sledge 

and carry it back to the top again. 

It is wonderful what a world of pleasure the whole race of 

children find in these little vehicles, which are very simple and very 

cheap. You may buy a very neat one for a shilling. Our boys 

bought themselves each one, and entered into the sport with 

thorough enthusiasm. On these they 

will sit, holding another child before 

them, and paddling with their heels, 

put the sledges into brisk motion, 

when they go on merrily of themselves. 

As they descend steep hill-sides, the 

boys are fond of lying down on "their 

backs, and thus gliding along at full 

speed. They say it is the next thing 

to flying, and grave men will tell of 

the fun they had when boys in the j 

snowy winter, taking their sledges 

far away up the mountain-sides, in a 

whole troop, and then coming down 

the winding and often steep mountain 

track, full drive, from height to height, 

again to the valley, the distance of 

two or three miles. 

One wonders, when it is seen how 

much active and healthy amusement 

these sledges afford, that they have 
not been introduced long ago in the 
snowy winters that we sometimes have, 
and many a time have had, in England. We have often a month 
or two, or rather have had, and may have again, of such weather, 
when slides are buried, and when such a simple and active amuse- 
ment is yet afforded by every highway and sloping situation. 

But it is not only the children that delight in sledging; the 
grown Germans are as much children in this respect as any of 
them. They partake with northern nations in all their fondness for 
sledging. Sledges are driving about everywhere, filled with merry 
faces, and attended by loud cracking of whips. They make also 




184 SLEDGING. 

large sledging parties, which are matters of much excitement and 
great display, as well as of very particular etiquette. Young- 
gentlemen will engage young ladies for a drive in a sledging-party 
or Schlitten-fahrt-partie, for three months before. Great are the 
arranging, the planning, the cogitations, while a party is in pre- 
paration. The acquaintance that shall be asked to join in it, the 
choice of ladies by the gentlemen, the number of sledges and out- 
riders that they shall sport, the place to which they shall drive, 
and whether they shall have torches to return by or not. All 
parties enter into the scheme with heart and soul, and much anxiety 
is felt lest any change in the weather, a sudden thaw, or a fierce 
snow-storm, should prevent it. 

But supposing all these arrangements and casualties brought to 
an auspicious termination, the sledging-party presents this appear- 
ance. You hear a loud cracking of whips, like the successive 
discharges of pistols. All heads are out of the windows through 
the whole street. The Germans are never tired of watching as well 
as of joining in sledging-parties. On comes a troop of outriders 
in caps, blue or other coloured jackets, white breeches and jack- 
boots, riding in no very exact order, but all smacking their whips 
with all their might; sounds of which, English ears which have not 
gone out of England, have no conception. This is to give due 
notice of the approach of the sledge-train to all on the way, and to 
give it also due eclat. Then comes a train of sledges, sometimes 
amounting to thirty or forty. The strict etiquette is that each 
shall contain two persons, a lady and gentleman, and no more, the 
gentleman driving and paying all necessary attentions to the lady; 
but often, besides the two, there is a driver and another servant 
seated on a little seat behind, which sticks out like a handle to the 
sledge. This man can at once dismount and assist, if a horse turn 
restive, or any other inconvenience occur; he can also carry a torch 
or two on return. Thus drives on gaily the whole long train, all 
the handsomest sledges and handsomest horses to draw them, from 
two to four in each, and the handsomest ladies to fill them that the 
city can afford being in requisition, and all are at the windows or in 
the streets, to see, and criticise, and enjoy these winter spectacles. 

Much emulation is felt as to who shall take the lead, ami 
indeed as to the whole scries of precedence, and this is generally 



SLEDGING. 185 

decided by lot. Every gentleman pays his share of the whole 
expense of the train, that is, for his own sledge and attendants, and 
his quota of the outriders, as well as for the entertainment, whatever 
it may be, at the place to which they drive. 

On entering the sledge the lady thanks her partner for the 
pleasure he has conferred on her by giving her this participation in 
so delightful a recreation, on which the gentleman expresses his 
high gratification at the honour which the lady does him by 
accepting of his invitation, and so they drive off. Through all the 
villages that they pass, the loud peitsching or whip-cracking of the 
drivers, the galloping of their horses, the long gay train of sledges 
of well-dressed gentlemen and handsome ladies, bring out the 
whole population, and fill them with delight. So flies on the train 
to some well-known inn at six or seven miles distance, where they 
take a refreshment, and generally entertain themselves with some 
of the simple German games till it is time to return. They choose 
their route so as to lead through some of the most beautiful 
scenery, and thus have the pleasure, which they otherwise would 
not, of seeing the country which they are so familiar with in 
summer, in its now strange and wild winter garb, often extremely 
beautiful when amongst the mountains crowned with forests filled 
with snow, and with the frozen river and high-arching snow-drifts 
below. 

If the party live on the outside of the city, and on that side 
which would render it totally unnecessary and totally out of the 
way to enter it, yet they never fail to do so. They go first, and 
traverse the whole length of the city, and then back again, before 
they set off on their proper route. They would consider all the 
pleasure gone if they did not shew their train to their fellow- 
citizens, and their fellow-citizens would look upon themselves as 
defrauded of the gaiety and spectacle. 

The return of the train is so timed as to reach the city when 
it is dark. Persons are sent to meet them with a supply of torches, 
and these being lit, they enter the city in picturesque style, with 
resounding whips, flaring torches, and sufficient bustle, and thus 
again traverse it; perhaps parade a few times round the most 
public square, for public benefit, and then drive to the house of 
one of the party, where they spend the evening in merriment. 



186 SLEDGING. 

It used to be the custom of every gentleman, on descending 
from the sledge, to salute his partner, but that has fallen into 
desuetude; and on some recent attempts on the part of very gallant 
gentlemen to revive this ancient " freedom of the press," the ladies 
have raised a spirited rebellion; and exercising the freedom of 
speech, have threatened to put an end to sledging altogether if it 
were persisted in. From causes which are noticed elsewhere, a 
greater strictness of etiquette, and of social habits, has of late years 
grown up in Germany, presenting a striking contrast with the 
spirit of the past, as discovered in old popular ballads, and other 
writings. Owing to the mixture of old freedom and new notions 
of decorum, nothing can present a more odd and amusing aspect 
than the present code of German social proprieties. 

The severe winter of 1840-1 enabled us to partake in the 
pleasure of a sledging party. It was amusing enough, however, 
to discover the many disappointments that one was liable to after 
having decided on such a thing. The party being not only resolved 
on, but all the preliminaries settled; the gentlemen that should 
make part of it being invited, and they having selected their part- 
ners; the number of outriders and torches being fixed, and the 
order of the procession determined, then the horses and sledges 
had to be ordered for a certain day. Then it was found that it 
could not take place that day, because all the sledges were engaged 
to another party; it must be the next day. The next day it blew 
and snowed a most tremendous and impracticable tempest. For 
days afterwards the snow was far too deep to admit of sledging. 
Before this could be done the Bahn-schlitten, or road-sledge, must 
proceed from this place to the next, to open the way, and repeat 
its journey every day that the snow continued to fall. 

This Bahn-schlitten is a large triangular sledge of rough timber, 
which, going with the point foremost, clears the road like a plough; 
forcing the snow to each side of the highway, and leaving a space 
wide enough for carriages in the middle. This machine, and its 
accompaniments, presents one of the most picturesque objects in 
the winter. It comes along, drawn, according to the depth of 
snow that has fallen, by from six to ten, or a dozen strong horses, 
and loaded with a score or two of men, whose weight serves as 
ballast to keep it firmly down, and thereby to clear the snow more 



SLEDGING. 1ST 

thoroughly away. It is, moreover, sometimes followed by those 
who are too numerous to ride. 

These men, sometimes in heavy snows, amount to fifty or a 
hundred. They are furnished with shovels, and are ready, when 
they arrive at drifts too deep for the sledge to pass through, to set 
on and cut a passage. They are so numerous that, if necessary, 
detachments can be left behind to complete the removal of any 
great obstruction. Thus goes on this great, lumbering, but most 
useful piece of machinery. One is every day travelling to and fro 
between one township and another, while snow continues to fall, 
the whole empire over, so that all obstructions to the passage of 
people and vehicles are speedily removed. And, as I have said, 
nothing can be more picturesque. The long train of heavy horses 
with riders upon them, in their bauer's large cocked hats, and with 
their heavy whips; the crowd of men in their dark blue dresses of 
jacket and trousers, and little caps or great hats, most of them, of 
course, with their pipes hanging from their mouth; the following 
throng; the depth of snow which silently gives way before this 
powerful wedge, and curls up in white and fleecy billows on each 
side, while all around the wind is whistling and the snow playing 
over and half-concealing the whole group. 

In a morning, too, before this Bahn-schlitten has made its pro- 
gress, after a good snowy night, nothing can be more picturesque 
than the figures that are wading along. Nothing can prevent the 
German peasant, and especially the women, from going to market. 
Accordingly, in the morning you see them wading and plunging 
along in such a snow, with their everlasting tub, or basket on their 
heads, in which stand the milk-pots and pans. They are wrapped 
in all sorts of garbs. Many of them with their husbands' or 
brothers' great blue jackets on; and some of them too in their 
great boots, holding up their clothes with no doubtful hand, and 
lifting one foot after another out of the deep snow; even com- 
pelled to laugh at their own singular figures and equipments, but 
not at all aware of their astonishing patience and perseverance. 

Well, this Bahn-schlitten having made its progress, and the 
road bidding fair to become soon in a proper state, another day is 
fixed, and all looks auspicious; when, behold! a venerable and 
highly esteemed old gentleman falls dangerously ill; most of the 



188 SLEDGING. 

party, too, being friends of the family, it is quite out of the ques- 
tion to make a frolicking sledging party under such circumstances. 
He gets worse, though the weather gets more frosty and favourable. 
He is likely to die; — no sledging party can be thought of till he 
is dead and buried. He lingers on — he gets somewhat better — he 
relapses — he dies. The funeral, luckily in Germany, is by law 
obliged to be within three days; then there must be a day or two 
for decorum; and all this time the young people are on the thorns 
of impatience and fear lest the frost should go. The day at length 
is once more fixed; and the day before, it begins relentlessly to thaw! 
It is still thought practicable — but, on going into the city, the city 
authorities have ordered all the snow to be removed from the 
streets within four-and-twenty hours, and a great part of the main 
street is already laid bare ! This is a final close to all hopes and 
fears, — not to go through the city is not to go at all ! 

The good-natured winter, however, sent a fresh supply of snow, 
and in another week the party was once more organised. But here 
started up another German difficulty, which, laughable as it was, 
threatened to tear the whole party to pieces with dissensions. The 
sledges, the order of precedence, the parties, all had been settled 
and determined, when it was found that a young lady, who was 
spending the winter with us, and who wore spectacles, could not 
even in the public train dispense with them. She had worn them 
almost from a child, and without them was like a bat in the day- 
time. To ride in public with a lady in spectacles ! It was a thing 
not for a moment to be heard of by any German. The spectacle 
prejudice is one of the most diverting prejudices with which the 
good Germans torment themselves. The men wear them publicly 
and privately; nay, almost the whole race of students, whether 
from affectation or real necessity, carry spectacle on nose. These 
youngsters, in fact, seem determined to monopolise the spectacle 
wear. Not a woman, however purblind she may be, and however 
she may be compelled in private to wear spectacles, dare appear in 
the streets or in public company with them on. She would as soon 
think of going to court in her nightcap! Every man that met her 
would stare' 'at her, every student laugh in her face, and every 
woman smile, and turn, and smile again. In fact, this young lad v. 
from her unconquerable, necessity of wearing spectacles, was soon 



SLEDGIM;. 189 

nicknamed and known through all Heidelberg as Fraulein Brille, or 
.Miss Spectacles. The gentleman, therefore, to whom she had 
fallen as partner in the sledge, was struck with horror on recollect- 
ing this fact. The ladies of her acquaintance were entreated in the 
most delicate way possible to hint to her the absolute necessity of 
her laying aside these obnoxious eye-machines on this occasion. 
She was equally confounded, and protested it was impossible for 
her to go without them; and she was not of a disposition to 
give up the most trifling bit of dissipation for any one's feelings 
whatever. Here then arose a mighty contest. The other gentle- 
men endeavoured to persuade the unlucky one to care nothing for 
it — that it was nothing. " Nothing ! why he should be insulted 
in the street. The students would shout, Fraulein Brille; and if 
insulted, he must challenge. It would certainly end in a duel or 
duels." As they thought it nothing, he proposed that one of them 
should exchange ladies, and take her. This was declined with 
much laughter; and then began to rise bad blood, and every 
prospect of an irreconcileable animosity, when the simple idea of a 
veil was suggested, and luckily adopted. Then came the polite 
Germans about the lady, and with that compliant language on 
such occasions to which I have had too frequently to allude, said : 
"0! it was nothing — nothing at all! nobody cared about her 
spectacles ; only as it was singular, it would be better not to attract 
too much attention for her own safety, as rude boys were apt, on 
such occasions, to throw stones at anything unusual." 

At last the party was really completed. With seven sledges, 
the handsomest the city could afford, and drawn by its best horses, 
Mrs. Howitt leading the way with four horses, preceded by seven 
outriders, we drew through the city. The whole of the inhabitants 
seemed in the streets to see the procession. The outriders made a 
most tremendous thunder with their whips; the train kept close 
together; all was well appointed, and was pronounced to be the 
best of the season. After traversing the whole length of the city 
and back again, we drove to Neckargemiind, a village about six 
miles up the Neckar valley, and took coffee, and made ourselves 
very merry with the German games of — Jacob where art thou? The 
Black Man; Blind-man's Buff, there called The Blind Cow, and 
so on. The party was full of fun; and in a game where they take 



190 SLEDGING. 

each other's hand and follow in a train till the leader gives the 
sign to break off, our leader led us out of the hall and all round 
the open gallery, round which the house is built. In our way 
suddenly coming upon a waiter, he was surrounded by the chain 
of people, and flying from one side to another to find his way out, 
occasioned much laughter. 

In the evening, on our return, we were met by torch-bearers; 
and one of them mounting behind each sledge, holding two torches, 
each four feet long, and each outrider taking one, we again traversed 
and retraversed the city, to the great satisfaction of the people. 
The whole, indeed, had a striking effect; and in its novelty, and 
the merriment and thorough heartiness of the whole party, was an 
entertainment as pleasant as it was new. 

The sledging parties in the country are often still more lusty, 
if not so gay. The rich bauers or farmers in the upper Rhinelands, 
and other parts, are excessively fond of these excursions, and with 
sledges that will hold at least twenty people, will, in winter, drive 
about for whole days together. The gentry, in some parts of Ger- 
many, will with much joviality make use of the same capacious 
vehicles, and set on foot parties to some place of resort. The 
trouble in the country to get these together, and the ludicrous 
accidents that occur to them, afford subject of much entertainment. 
In the kingdom of Wirtemberg, the Wirths, or landlords of the inns, 
are especially obliging. If you stop merely at their doors, while 
your driver gives his horses some bread and water, they feel much 
annoyed if you will not honour their house by going in. If you 
want nothing, they don't trouble themselves about that. They will 
do you any little service they can, just as much as if you had spent 
a large sum with them. At Waldenbuch, not far from Stuttgard, 
we stopped at the door of one of these good-natured men. We 
had recently breakfasted, and, as we wanted nothing, and the 
driver said he would not stay long, we proposed to sit in the carriage 
for the time. The wirth, a tall and very respectable-looking man, for 
tne wirths are generally men of a tolerable education, and often 
hold a rank with the smaller gentry of the neighbourhood, came 
and begged us to alight. We explained to him that we wanted 
nothing, and therefore did not wish to trouble them' by going in 
and out. lie appeared much disappointed; said it was of no con- 



SLEDGING. 191 

sequence whether we took anything or nothing, but he hoped we 
would honour his house by entering it. As we however respect- 
fully persisted in remaining in the carriage, he went away, but 
soon came again, and with much earnestness besought us to alight. 
If we would not go in, we ought at least to see the country, and 
there was an old ducal castle too that we ought to see, and if we 
would permit him he would have much pleasure in being our guide. 
This disinterested kindness it would have been most uncourteous 
to decline. With many thanks we alighted; and the good-hearted 
Swabian, calling for his hat and his cane, for he did not think his 
ordinary cap which he had on sufficiently in dress to appear openly 
with strangers, he led the way. He was, as observed, a tall man, and 
in his light drab long coat and Leghorn hat, he might have passed 
for some neighbouring graf, had we not known to the contrary. He 
was, in fact, as gentlemanly and well-informed as any graf could 
be. Arriving at the church, which stood on the hill opposite the 
castle, he first directed our attention to the country round, which 
with its fine beech woods and corn fields and green meadows, was 
really very attractive, he then said, pointing to two graves. — " Had 
you not come up hither, you would not have seen these, There 
lie the father and mother of Dannecker, the great sculptor. Here 
Dannecker was born. His father was a groom in the stables of this 
castle, and here Dannecker spent his boyhood. But come into the 
castle, I will shew you something more." The castle belongs to 
the king of Wirtemberg, but is now deserted. He opened the door 
of one of the dungeons, and to our great surprise we beheld that it 
was an apothecary's shop. The apothecary, a little man in a short 
blue coat, and with a head and face of unusual size for his body, 
sate poring over a large book. He rose with a smile to receive us, 
and hearing that we were English, he began to address us in good 
English. He told us he had been in London, and in North 
America. Seeing that his book was not in German type, I gave a 
glance at it, and was surprised to see that it was Don Quixote in 
the native Spanish. We could not but feel a singular interest in 
a man, thus suddenly found in the dungeon of a country castle, 
thus informed, travelled, and occupied. 

We looked round with renewed interest on his place of abode. 
In the massy stone walls yet hung the monstrous iron rings which 



192 SLEDGING. 

had once confined the prisoners ; but around in curious contrast, 
stood his drugs in jars and drawers, and on his counter, wild- 
flowers of great beauty, which he had gathered in his walks ; pinks 
and others, which are only to be seen in our gardens. When we 
had taken leave of him, we observed to our Wirth, that in this 
man he must find a pleasant and most intelligent neighbour. 
" No •" said he with a significant shake of the head, ' ' he is a 
companion for no one. Some years ago he lost his wife, and from 
that time he has never cared for human society. He never comes 
into my house. He sits here in this dungeon from day to day, 
month to month, and year to year. He sees nobody but those 
who come for medicine. He sits and ponders over his books in 
various languages, and when he is weary, towards evening he walks 
solitarily into the woods." Many a time have we since thought 
of the little apothecary poring over his Don Quixote in the dun- 
geon of that solitary castle. 

But our Wirth opening the door of another dungeon, then 
gave us the history of a prisoner who had been confined in it. 
It was the gardener of the castle. Some plate had been stolen ; 
the steward, who had a mortal hatred to the gardener, whose 
independent, sturdy nature would not let him wink at those 
dishonest practices in which the steward indulged in the duke's 
absence, contrived to fix the suspicion on him. He suffered here 
a long and bitter confinement. The tutor, who was in reality the 
person, was tormented in his conscience by the fate of the unhappy 
gardener, and wrote an anonymous letter to the duke, declaring 
that the gardener was innocent. The hand, though disguised, 
was detected. The tutor by this brought suspicion upon him- 
self; he was arrested and examined; he confessed and was dis- 
missed. But when the gardener was brought to the presence 
of the duke, it was discovered that the steward had, during his 
imprisonment, practised on him the most unheard-of cruelties. 
The duke highly enraged, determined to punish him in a most 
signal manner, and to commence his punishment in a style that 
should make him feel it to the very heart's core. He therefore 
invited a large party to dine, and amongst them the steward. 
But at dinner the poor gardener, his victim, was placed just 
opposite to him, and he found his own plate turned upside down. 



SLEDGING. 193 

Dinner wont on jovially; course after course was served; but when 
all the rest, even the poor gardener, had their plates filled with 
the richest meats, not a morsel was offered to the guilty steward — 
his plate remained empty, and still upside down. " Herr Ver- 
walter !" cried continually the duke from the top of the table, 
"Herr Verwalter, he eats nothing!" The term he, such only as 
was addressed to persons of no quality whatever, marked his 
degradation; and every eye being drawn upon him by the call 
of the duke at every fresh course — " Herr Verwalter ! he eats 
nothing \" — he sate the most wretched object of guilt and despair. 
The torments which he experienced during that long dinner hour, 
the eyes of scorn and aversion for ever turned on him by the 
implacable lord, — " Herr Verwalter ! he eats nothing ! Herr Ver- 
walter ! he drinks nothing \" and the contemptuous gaze of his 
victim, for ever looking into his guilty soul, — were probably tenfold 
more than his cruelty had inflicted on the gardener through his 
whole confinement. No sooner was he able, in the loud riot of 
the following course, to steal unseen of the many away, than he 
made his escape to his house, and before the feast was at an end, 
his life was, by his own hand. 

But these relations of our worthy Wirth were not those for 
which I have introduced him here; it was for that of his sledging 
party. In the stables of the castle he tapped with his cane on a 
very capacious sledge, and breaking into laughter, said: "That is 
mine ! Aha ! I cannot see it without laughing. If you had but 
been here at a sledging party that we had last winter ! The forest- 
master and the clergyman were always saying that we could not 
get up a genteel sledging party here. That other places could do 
it, but that we had not here any respectable materials to compose 
one of. I determined to try. I took my sledge and drove round. 
I went here and there. I got together the amtman, the clergy- 
man, and the physician of the next dorf, the collector of the land 
taxes, the steward, the master of the forests, and their families. 
We made a most imposing party. In this my sledge were stowed 
sixteen souls. I drove, and we took the lead. All went well; we 
drove out far into the country. The air was clear, though sharp, 
and all were in the highest spirits. My horses were full of life; 
and as I led the way at a great rate, I heard behind me a loud 

o 



194 SLEDGING. 

sound of mirth and laughter and gossip. But unluckily, as we 
passed over a part of the way which hung over the valley below, 
the snow had drifted over a precipice of at least a dozen feet high, 
and hung in great round rolls and wreaths. My horses at this 
critical spot suddenly took fright, and became restive. I endea- 
voured to whip them sharply forward, but spite of all my exertions 
they backed and backed till one side of the sledge was over the 
precipice. There was a sudden and astounding shriek, not only 
from those in the sledge, but from those in the sledges behind, as 
they saw it toppling over. I leaped out to seize the horses by the 
reins and drag them forward; but it was in part too late. The 
cries from all the party rose more wildly than before : and glancing 
at the sledge, I saw one after another of its load disappear over the 
precipice. Amongst them was a little boy of mine, only about four 
years old. As I saw him plunge down over the precipice, I lost 
all self-command, and all thought of every thing else. I ran in dis- 
traction towards the nearest point where I could descend into the 
valley, crying — 'Oh! my child! my child! my child is killed. ! J I 
plunged frantically down a deep descent; I rushed like a maniac to 
the spot where the child and the others had fallen. There were 
four or five men and women already scrambling out of the snow- 
heaps, or standing as much like pillars of salt as Lot's wife, and 
crying and cursing and shaking themselves in the middle of the 
way. As I drew near, all at once broke out furiously — ' Oh, what 
have you done ! This is your fine sledging party ! Oh, you have 
killed us! You have lamed us for life!' — 'Cursed stuff!' I 
exclaimed, raging: ' My child! my child! where is he? He perishes 
■ — he is smothering in the snow!' — I sprung into the drifts; I 
caught a sight of his red worsted glove — I seized it. I grasped 
his arm — I drew him out. He was already black and blue in the 
face; but presently a gush of blood started from his nose, and he 
set up a most vigorous yell. He had fallen with his nose and eye 
against a stump or a stone, and I found that his eye was seriously 
injured. One man near me exclaimed, 'Oh! I have broken my 
arm!' — 'Never mind your arm!' I exclaimed. 'What docs your 
arm signify? my child's eye is knocked out!' As soon as I was 
satisfied the child was not actually dead or dying, nor seriously 
hurt, 1 looked about to discover if any one else was yet in the 



SLEDGING. 195 

snow, and presently I espied a pair of great old boots standing 
up in the drift, the head and body of whose possessor had dis- 
appeared downwards in the snow. I had known these boots too 
many years not to recognise them in an instant. The old doctor 
of the next village was there lying head foremost. Much as I was 
concerned for him, and loudly as I called on those who had already 
got out to come to his help, there was something so ludicrous in 
his situation that I could not for the life avoid bursting into loud 
laughter, as with all our might we grasped the old boots and 
dragged out their owner. It was some time before we could wipe 
away the snow out of his face, and set him on a great stone to 
recover his breath. For a while he gasped and panted; and 
when we asked him how he felt, did not even answer by a shake of 
his head, but looked wildly and angrily about him. At length he 
rose suddenly from the stone, cast the most savage glances at 
me, and with much panting and catching of his breath, said to 
me, 'There! you have done for me with your verdammte sledging 
party. You have cut me off in the middle of my days/ The 
worthy old man was already upwards of eighty, and the idea of his 
being cut off in the middle of his days was too much even for those 
who had themselves but just got out of the snow, and were there- 
fore in not the best of humours : a general laugh arose, at which 
the old gentleman looked highly indignant, and marched off in 
great scorn. But if we were merry at the old gentleman's sally, 
how much was this increased when, hearing a cry for help some- 
where over our heads, we looked up and beheld a big man suspended 
by his coat-laps in the boughs of a tree which stretched over the 
precipice. It was the steward. There he hung like Absalom, and 
quivered his legs like a bird in a springe, being neither able to 
reach hold of anything with his hands nor to drop down into the 
snow. At this sight our laughter grew tenfold. We were abso- 
lutely disabled from flying to his assistance ; but our noise brought 
some of the other party to the brow of the precipice to see what 
was the matter, where they beheld the cause of our entertainment. 
There was an instant call from them to the rest above to come and 
look. All that dared, flocked forward till they could see the poor 
steward dangling like a scarecrow in the tree. At this nobody 
could forbear laughing — all broke out; and above and below the 

o 2 



196 SLEDGING. 

poor fellow heard our unnatural mirth, as it must have seemed to 
him. A light active youth, however, soon scrambled into the tree, 
and cutting away several small boughs, down plumped the steward 
into the snow. 

" Nobody was really hurt, except it was myself, on whom all 
joined in heaping the bitterest reproaches ; first, for having so 
zealously advocated and brought about this party, and secondly, for 
driving on a road so dangerous, though this latter matter had been 
the choice of others, not mine. By the time that we reached 
home, nevertheless, all had recovered their good humour, and were 
more inclined to laugh at the ludicrous parts of the adventure than 
to regret what had happened, except the worthy old doctor. He 
cast most cutting looks and speeches at many of us, but more 
especially at me, over his dinner and his wine, and persisted that 
we had done for him, and had actually cut him off in the middle of 
his days. The worthy old man yet lives, however, though he never 
has, and never will, forgive our laughter." 



©M&PYIK XVu 



SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GERMANS, 
AND ODDITIES OF ETIQUETTE. 



Under other heads we have noticed the curious contrast between 
the state of the Germans before the war and since. Their long- 
stationary condition in arts and husbandry, in domestic arrange- 
ments and manners, in their dreamy life in their colleges and 
houses, and in their firm and pertinacious adherence to old habits 
in everything, spite of the progress of the rest of Europe. The 
revolution, which Napoleon's rousing invasion brought with it, has 
extended also to their morals and etiquette. At present they are 
in these respects also in a transition state, and the anomalies which 
the mixture of the old and the new present, are very remarkable. 
They are at once domestic and formal, homely and precise. They 
are an odd mixture of feeling and caution; moral strictness and 
freedom of manners. They are sentimental and religious, yet they 
have little regard to the Sunday. Shops and theatres are open ; 
business, dancing, singing, and drinking at public-houses go on, ' 
the latter more briskly on this day than on most others; yet 7 
they dare not introduce an ecclesiastical character into an odd," 
charade in social company, lest they should hurt the religious 
prejudices of somebody present. 

The Germans are the original inventors and introducers of the 
Waltz; the waltz is the national dance. It is the everlasting and 
never-wearying dance of high and low life. Where there is a 
meeting of any merriment, there they are spinning round in this 
eternal whirl. Begin whatever dance they may, it is as sure to turn 
into a waltz as that night follows day. They must spin about together 
as if every twirl took them a degree nearer to felicity, and like the 
lark or the eagle, the highest point of the heaven of existence 



\ 



198 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

could only be reached by a gyration. Yet this dance has shocked 
other nations, and has not been anywhere introduced without a 
strong opposition from the more decorous and serious portion of the 
population; on account of the freedom, and even licence of its 
action. Young men taking the young women round the waist, 
and twirling them, round a room like so many whirligigs, were 
regarded by decorous mammas and chaperones as very shocking 
fellows. Yet, would it be believed that these same German damsels, 
who waltz and spin away for whole nights together with young men 
whom they never saw before, would be dreadfully shocked if one 
of these same young men, the day after, on setting out to take a 
public walk, in company with the father and mother and the whole 
family, or two or three families together, were to offer her his arm ! 
Young people, unless they are formally betrothed to each other, 
never think of such a thing as walking arm-in-arm. This is so 
established and well-known a fact, that in one of their plays; where 
a young lady, in order to make a young man in a fit of jealous 
anger commit himself irrecoverably with his affianced love, proposed 
that he should take a Avalk along the city street with herself, who is 
known also to be one of his friends, exclaims in horror — ""What! 
walk arm-in-arm with a lady in public ! Heavens ! It were mad- 
ness and destruction!" 

The same pair, therefore, who over-night clasp each other's 
waists and leap about for hours like two romps, carefully avoid 
touching each other's clothes as they walk out. A whole party 
setting out on a walk, or going through the city to any place 
together, however familiar and friendly they may be, go scattering 
along all loosely like a flock of pigeons; nay, as often as otherwise 
you see the gentlemen walking on together, and the women coming 
on together behind them; nay, still stranger, this is the order even 
of a marriage procession! I shall not soon forget the blank and 
confused look of a young lady, to whom, soon after my arrival in the 
country, and ignorant of its singular etiquette, I offered my arm on 
setting out in a party, old married man as I am. In their very 
churches the sexes sit opposite, not even families occupying together 
one seat. 

So far is this feeling carried, that it is not even decorous for 
young people, brothers and sisters, to live in the same house, if 



OF THE GERMANS. 199 

their parents are deceased or absent. A bachelor brother cannot 
have his sister to keep his house without shocking German notions 
of decorum. It is even said that, in some families, if a young 
gentleman in the habit of visiting them calls, and the young ladies 
only are within, they do not venture to ask him to take a chair. 
He stands while he makes the passing compliments of the day, bows 
and retires. Englishmen, not knowing this state of things, have 
felt themselves so much offended in being treated with such 
apparent distance and incivility, that they have withdrawn in 
disgust, and refused further acquaintance. 

The same singularity marks their passing salutations in public. 
The peasantry, as they meet you, give you a nod or an open smile, 
and a "Good-day;" but if you meet a gentleman that you have 
been laughing and joking and playing with the evening before, at 
all sorts of romping games, he immediately assumes the deepest 
solemnity. You would imagine that you had unwittingly given 
him the deepest offence, or that at least his father was dead. He 
doffs his cap with a stately and profound politeness, fixes his eyes 
with an imperturbable gravity on you, and rushes past with accele- 
rated speed. The young people who are on the most laughing 
terms in company do just the same, only more solemnly if possible, 
and such a thing as a smile or a gay glance of the eye may just as 
much be expected from them as from the ruins of an old castle. 

The same parties who may not touch each other in a walk, 
though they may waltz together, may go out tete-a-tete in a 
sledging party. A young man may take a young woman alone 
with him in his sledge, and drive off with her for miles. I believe 
however, which makes the oddity only the greater, that it is con- 
sidered necessary that a matron should be somewhere in the party. 
That is, if sledging is proposed, it is necessary to make a party, 
and in all German parties a matron must make one; but the pairs 
who are in each sledge can drive off as far as they please from each 
other, and the matron, who gives decorum to the whole concern, 
must have a species of ubiquity to act as guardian of social pro- 
prieties on such occasions. In all parties into the country, of 
which the Germans are so fond, a matron is an indispensable 
accompaniment. 

There is to us an apparent and very curious inconsistency in 



200 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

the Germans, between their outward solemnity of manner and their 
inward sensitiveness. These same people whom we are accustomed 
to call the phlegmatic Germans, have shewn in their modern litera- 
ture that they possess sentiment not merely of the deepest, but of 
the most varied character. Goethe's Faust, the most accurate and 
living picture of the popular character and manners, is sufficient 
proof of this, and indeed all their literature is full of the same 
evidence. There is not a more social and affectionate people than 
they are. They are particularly kind and attentive to each other; 
sympathise deeply in all each other's troubles and pleasures, suc- 
cesses, and reverses. They form the strongest attachments, and 
maintain them through life. Young men entertain that brotherly 
feeling for each other that you seldom see in England. They go, 
as youths, often walking with their arms about each other, as only 
school-boys do with us. They put their arms over each other's 
shoulders in familiar conversation in company, in a very brotherly 
way. I say nothing of that hearty kissing of each other on meeting 
after an absence, that to an English eye, in great rough-whiskered 
and mustachioed men, has something very repulsive in it. They 
make presents of memorials to each other, and maintain a great 
and lasting correspondence. The correspondence of many Germans 
is enormous. Ladies who spend the morning in household affairs, 
will also in the afternoon be as busy in writing to their numerous 
friends. It is in private social intercourse alone that the Germans 
display the genuine vivacity and heartiness of their character. In 
the social and select circle of approved and approving friends, they 
throw off all formality, and become as frolicsome and joyous as so 
many boys and girls. These same young men that in the street 
will go by you as swift as a steam-engine, and as dark as a thunder 
cloud, there become the very imps of mirth and jollity. They are 
ready to enter into any fun, to act any part — to sing, to romp, to 
laugh, and quiz each other without mercy. 

They have indeed the faculty of becoming children, and even 
buffoons, without becoming ridiculous. They do not feel them- 
selves foolish, and therefore don't become so. None but children 
in other countries can give themselves, body and soul, to the flow 
of their spirits, and throw themselves headlong, and yet with 
safety into the whirlpool of active enjoyment. The grave Germans, 



OF THE GERMANS. '201 

strange as it may seem, can retain their boyhood and girlhood 
through life, and at any moment be as frolicsome, as artless, as 
noisy, as happy as children; yet without ever leaving go for an 
instant of the saving guidance of a manly discretion. The fact 
is, that they have a purity and elevation of moral feeling, which is 
at once their safety, their dignity, their honour, and their happi- 
ness. It is this which gives and preserves so much manly attach- 
ment in their friendships, so much propriety and endurance in 
their loves, so much confidence and esteem in their social in- 
tercourse. 

In similar circumstances, young men of other nations are apt 
to become impertinent and indecorous. We have heard English 
young ladies say, that in all the familiarities of waltzing and fes- 
tive parties the German gentlemen have never shewn the slightest 
disposition to pass the bounds of the utmost delicacy. They have 
given none of those looks, those squeezes of the hand, and those 
private signals which English young men are but too apt to allow 
themselves. Yet here, again, is another mark of the sensitiveness 
of the German character. These same young men, who, in a 
particular circle will thus combine and be as gay and alert as gras- 
hoppers, will, if one individual come in on whom they have not the 
same reliance, at once involve themselves in their cold formality, as 
a hedgehog, at the slightest approach of danger, wraps himself in 
his globe of spines, or as a snail retreats into its shell. 

We have seen a party of them act over the scenes of their 
Burschen life with a felicity of conception, of action, and of talent, 
that would have pleased even a London audience on the boards of 
one of our great theatres. A single person of their own nation 
and town, who has made himself notorious by his propensity to 
criticise and quiz, has appeared, and they have been suddenly 
paralyzed and dispirited, and their proceedings have become a 
most miserable failure. It would be the most hopeless attempt to 
endeavour to engage them to be funny in any but their most 
approved circle; a thousand bugbears of ridiculous offence would 
start up before them, and daunt them past all power of action or 
desire to please. 

There is no doubt that their political institutions and habits 
have had a great effect in producing this excess of sensitiveness. 



202 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

" Die Wissenschaft ist in Deutschland einsiedlei'isch," says Iin- 
mermann; Knowledge in Germany is a hermit. The Germans 
sit in their schools and their closets, pondering over books, and 
making it appear that the Romans did not write their own history 
correctly, and Demosthenes was wrong in his orations, though his 
cotemporaries thought him right, while the rest of the world are 
battling with the opinions of the present, and determining to wTest 
from their rulers the power which is more than their delegated 
right. In England, every man is so accustomed to see all sorts of 
topics, whether of government or religion, tossed and buffeted 
about in the newspapers and periodicals, the actions of government 
and of any individual of the government, even of the monarch 
himself; he is so accustomed to see and feel his own actions and 
opinions attacked and canvassed, that he grows hardened to 
opinion. His habit becomes a coat-of-mail, that he knows if he be 
honest will defend him, and in the daily exercise of his unbounded 
right of inquiry and disquisition, he works off any nervousness or 
excess of energy that may belong to him. The case of the German 
is very different. He sits and attacks things and opinions that 
passed a thousand or more years ago, and whose supporters cannot 
rise from their graves to defend them. He and his fathers have for 
generations lived under governments that, with certain appearances 
of a free constitution, have not been free. The smaller governments 
have lived under the awe of the larger governments, and the larger 
governments have avowedly never tolerated the freedom of the press 
or of speech. The Germans have, in fact, no political life; and they 
have thus acquired in matters of public opinion, a sequacious and 
yielding character. Their newspapers consist rather of extracts 
from foreign papers, and dry notices of facts at home, than of that 
daring, dauntless, and perpetual discussion of political doctrines, 
that marks ours, and the French and American ones. It is the 
same in religion. However they may, and do, in the abstract, 
attack the very foundations of Christianity, they yield to the pressure 
of government in all that regards the public form of religion, in a 
manner totally inconceivable to Englishmen. Whatever may be 
the various opinions they may arrive at in their private reading of 
the Scriptures, they do not attempt to make these the ground and 
foundation of independent sects ; no, — they permit the Lutheran 



OF THE GERMANS. 203 

and the Calvinistic parties, to be blended into one, to occupy 
the same churches, and the same pulpits, and in the freest 
states to remain no other ostensible religious parties than the 
Protestant and Catholic. These circumstances produce another 
effect, which, however apparently ludicrous, is very expressive. 
No German can drink more than one, or at most two cups of 
tea. If you ask them how this is, they say tea makes them drunk, 
and it makes their heads ache. If you tell them that it has quite 
the opposite effect on us English, they themselves say, " Ay, your 
English lead more active lives. Your business, your politics, 
they work off your excitability; but we Germans have not these 
safety-valves, and sitting and thinking so much at home makes us 
more sensitive." It is true; and this we shall see is shewn in 
many ways. 

Caution, by the habitual effect of a jealous government and a 
universal police, has become constitutional in them, and there is 
often visible a strange contrast between this constitutional caution 
and their good feeling towards each other. So constitutional 
and national has this become, that the shape of the German head 
bears out the theories of philosophy, that it is intellectual and 
full of caution. The heads of the children immediately strike you 
with their great roundness and breadth, and the caution of the 
German is continually before you. In riding, in driving, in their 
fear of ridicule and of giving offence; in everything, to the very 
massiveness of their architecture, they are cautious to the extreme. 
Our countrymen have only to look at the accidents — the shocking, 
wholesale, and continual accidents on our railroads, where the 
destruction of human life is deplorable; and then at the very rare 
occurrence, one might almost say the non-occurrence of such on the 
German, to see how strongly and how beneficially this caution has 
operated here. 

The driving of the Germans in all sorts of vehicles is notorious. 
About five or six miles an hour, on the best and most level roads, 
is the utmost speed. The only exception that occurs to me, is 
the swift driving in the streets of Vienna, and the rate of the 
Eilwagens on one or two of the great mercantile roads, as between 
Frankfort and Leipsic, where the speed may reach nine miles the 
hour. But who has not been both wearied and amused with the 



204 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERIST1' 3 

slow caution of the German drivers? At every little descent on the 
road, that would almost require a spirit-level to discern that it is 
a descent, he dismounts, and puts on his drag. On a road of the 
gentlest undulations, where a heavy English coach would go at 
the rate of ten English miles an hour, without drag or pause, up 
hill or down, he is continually alighting and putting on one or 
both drags, alighting and ascending with a patience and perse- 
verance that amazes you. Nay, in many states, this caution is 
evinced also by the government, and is forced on the driver, par- 
ticularly in Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Austria, by a post by the 
way-side, standing at the top of every little slope on the road, 
having painted on a board, a black and conspicuous drag, and 
announcing a fine, of commonly six florins (ten shillings), on any 
loaded-carriage which shall descend without the drag on. In every 
thing they are continually guarding against those accidents which 
result from hurry, or slightness of construction. 

But this caution in other respects assumes a shape of apathy 
which is much at variance with their otherwise benevolent dis- 
positions. No one can have been long in this country without 
having observed with astonishment the perfect nonchalance with 
which they will witness public accidents and outrages, without a 
soul moving from the spot, or shewing any anxiety to assist or 
rescue. Where in England hundreds would rush in a moment 
to help or save, — in Germany, men stand only and wonder, or go 
by as if nothing were amiss. I should be sorry to be assaulted by 
robbers even in a city street, or to be upset in a boat, and be in 
danger of drowning, though scores of people were on the bank, 
for they would certainly stand and consider about it till it was 
too late. They think rather than act; and it was this, besides 
their country being divided into about as many petty states as 
there are days in the year, which gave Buonaparte such a decided 
chance against them. They stood in wonder to see him sweep 
through the country, and only thought of being up, and making 
an active resistance, when he was already master. An American 
gentleman gave us a curious example of this slowness of action, 
and in fact, introduced himself to us, on the occurrence of it. We 
were embarking on the Danube at Linz, for Vienna. The steamer 
had nui been able to get up to Linz from the lowness of the 



OF THE GERMANS. 205 

water. It lay at the distance of twenty English miles farther down, 
and we must be conveyed thither in a common Danube boat. 
The company had known this fact for three days, yet till the very 
morning not a stroke had been struck in order to put this boat in 
a fitting condition to carry down at least a hundred people, of all 
ranks, and in very wet weather. It had neither a cover from the 
rain, nor a seat to sit upon. These had to be hurried up at the 
last hour. As we went on board, they were still busy putting down 
the seats. 

On the plank down which the passengers had to descend into 
the boat, moreover, stood up a couple of inches, a stout tenpenny 
nail. This nail caught the skirts of every lady that went down, 
tore several of them, and over it several gentlemen stumbled. The 
American was standing to see bow long it would be before any 
one would conceive the idea that this nail must be knocked down. 
He said, he expected if they were all Germans, from what he had 
seen of them from a year's residence amongst them, it would go 
on to the very end of the chapter. And, in truth, so it appeared 
probable. One after another caught on the nail. Gown after 
gown went crash ; but they were lifted off again, and the parties 
went forward. Gentlemen stumbled against the nail, and cursed 
it, and went on. At length Mrs. Howitt's gown caught, I disen- 
gaged it, and called to a man to bring his hammer, and knock it 
down. Though I said this in German, the American soon after 
came to me, and said, " Sir, excuse my freedom, but I know you 
are an Englishman/' I asked him how he discovered that. He 
replied, "by the very simple fact of your having immediately 
ordered the driving down of that nail." And he then related what 
I have stated above. But I must give some instances in which 
this slowness amounts to a strange and culpable indifference. 

One Sunday evening, as we sate in our house, we heard below 
the windows, a female cry out in great distress. The cry was 
repeated, and continued in a tone of the deepest lamentation and 
appeal. We threw open the windows. It was clear moonlight. 
We observed a fellow with a knife in his hand, who had hold of 
a young woman, and was using her very rudely and furiously. 
We called out to him, but he took no notice. Numbers of persons 
were coming along the opposite side of the road, but not a single 



206 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

person stopped, nor seemed to regard the woman's cries, which 
became every moment more vehement and imploring. We shouted, 
" Will nobody help the girl ?" There was no answer, all marched 
solemnly on. It was a circumstance which in England, on a 
public highway, and at the entrance of a city, would in a moment 
have assembled a crowd. The fellow would have been seized and 
well chastised on the spot, or handed over to the police. Indignant 
at the indifference of the people, I rushed down stairs, and out of 
the house. As I went on, three students passing at the time, said 
laughing, "See, he is going to this man!" and then stood smoking 
their pipes to see the issue. As I ran towards the fellow, our 
neighbours cried from their windows, "0! don't go there, sir! 
don't go there ! The man is known for a great villain, and he has 
generally a knife in his hand." 

My indignation was only the greater. I ran on, when up came 
a troop of ruffians, the fellow's accomplices, with the fiercest threats, 
and flung themselves into a posture of defence, crying "Off! off! 
keep back at your peril ! " The students hearing this, now turned 
back to my assistance, but none of them having any weapon of 
defence, and the rapscallions showering on us a tremendous volley 
of stones from the heaps by the way-side, we were obliged to flee 
for our lives into the house. Here all the women were in the 
greatest alarm, the cook saying, "0 Sir! why would you risk 
your life in that way? They are desperate fellows, and they cany 
knives, and the woman is most likely a bad one." I replied I did 
not care if she was the worst creature on the earth. I would never 
hear a woman cry out so pitiously for help without trying to aid 
her. I insisted on going to the city with the three students for 
the police ; but on opening the door, we found that the scoundrels 
had posted themselves in a strong body between us and the city 
gate, armed with sticks and stones, while the poor girl kept 
crying for help in God's name to all the passers-by, who marched 
solemnly on, without deigning to stop a moment or utter a word 
of expostulation. 

There was but one chance, and that was to get out at a back 
window, and up through the wood to the city, in which way the 
rogues could not perceive us. But before we returned, the fellow s 
were gone ; and wc learned that the girl, who had come out of a 



OF THE GERMANS. 



207 



dancing-room near to cool herself, had been pursued by these 
fellows, and had finally, probably through their alarm, made her 
escape from them again to it. 

Through the whole affair the conduct of the passers-by was 
most disgraceful. They truly deserved the appellation of phlegmatic 
Germans, for the piercing cries of a woman in distress, which will 
excite even a savage, could not the least move them. Their habitual 
caution totally overcame their better impulses, so far as to lead 
them not to interfere. Yet these same people, though of the 
ordinary class of the citizens, would probably be ready in common 
life, to render you any civility; or when thoroughly roused by any 
national, or other cause of high interest, be ready to sell their own 
lives for the preservation of the public and the social good. 

Singing and drinking are the speediest means of exciting and 
causing them to throw off their habitual caution. A song will 
thrill through the heart of the whole empire like an electric stroke, 
and produce the most instantaneous and universal enthusiasm, as 
was evidenced by the new Rhine song, on the threat of invasion by 
the French in the autumn of 1840. Travelling once in the Black 
Forest, we had one of the most solemn and cautious of coachmen. 
He seemed as if he could as soon perpetrate a murder as a smile 
or a joke. He was perfectly tiresome with his everlasting putting 
on of his drags, and the slowness of his driving down the most 
insignificant descents. But, while we stopped in the Murg-Thal 
to dine, he had found what he called, " ein liebes gutes herz/' a 
dear good heart. It was a gesell, or journeyman, who had been 
treating him to- beer, on condition that he should allow him to 
have a seat with him on his box. Not being aware of these cir- 
cumstances, though we saw that the coachman's face was unusually 
red, we granted the request he made for the youth, Avho appeared 
a very respectable one of his class, and much wearied. We had 
not proceeded far, however, before our coachman became very 
talkative. Said he had gone with many English families into 
Switzerland. That he had learned some English, which amounted 
to so much as this: "Dis is goot road. Goot fur die bosses, goot 
fur die cutchman. Viel promenade!" This he spoke continually, 
with much laughter, thinking "Viel promenade!" also was most 
excellent English. 



208 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

From talking English he proceeded to aslc our permission to 
sing. He said he had learned to yodle in Switzerland, and if we 
would allow him, he would yodle us some Swiss songs; for that 
when his heart was glad he must sing. It was evident that the 
man was well primed, for his whole manner and countenance was 
changed. He was full of smiles and nods; his face was like one of 
molten copper; the veins of his neck and temples seemed as if they 
would burst. But trusting to his German caution, we did not fear. 
We let him sing, and he sung most excellently, though with many 
nods and winks and quavering of his hand to his companion. He 
made his sonorous yodlings resound in these black pine woods; 
and even through the villages he did not cease. But we soon, to 
our alarm, observed that while flourishing with his right hand, his 
left, in which were the reins, insensibly drew the horses to that 
side of the road. I called to him, and bade him desist with his 
singing if he could not keep the middle of the way. He only turned 
round and said, " Ah, sir ! when I overturn you tell me of it. I 
have driven on all sorts of roads these thirty years, and never yet 
had the spoke of a wheel broken." At this very moment we 
approached the edge of a precipice descending into one of those 
deep glens in the Black Forest out of which rise so gloriously the 
splendid stems of the silver fir, many of them two hundred feet 
high; and it seemed as if the man had resolved to shew us that he 
could drive to a hair, for to our horror, and spite of our loudest 
shouts to him, he whipped on his horses; they drew, under the 
guidance of his reins, to the very brink — the wheels entered a ditch, 
and the carriage went over! Luckily there was a wall of loose 
stones built on the margin of the precipice, and against this the 
carriage fell. The fear was that it should give way, and then we 
must all spin down together. We managed to burst open the 
carriage-door on the side next the road, and leaped out in safety. 
The man was sobered; but it was not so easy a matter to extricate 
the carriage; any plunging of the horses might yet throw down the 
wall, and the whole equipage go together. There were peasants at 
work in the field opposite and about us. They saw the accident, 
but they only stood to watch it, though there was one within twenty- 
yards of us. We called loudly to them to come and assist us to 
lift out the carriage, but not a creature moved; nay, the man near 



OF THE GERMANS. 209 

us leaned on his rake and most calmly surveyed us. By the united 
efforts of coachman, gesell, and myself, we at length got the 
carriage out of its perilous position, with some trifling damage to it. 

In Berlin — as everybody knows who has been there — along 
every street, and before every house, even in the finest parts of the 
city and the neighbourhood of the king's palace, is a stagnant sink, 
which fills the whole air with its rank odour. This is owing to 
the dead flat on which the city stands, which the people tell you 
totally prevents the draining of it. Into one of these sinks we 
saw a little boy of about five or six years of age plunged headlong, 
as he was playing on the causeway, by a rough fellow who was 
going carelessly along. The boy was in danger of being suffocated, 
but nobody seemed to care. He was left to scramble out; and 
after clearing his face and mouth in some degree from the filth, he 
began to cry most piteously. It was in a crowded part of the 
town, but nobody seemed to take much notice; we therefore asked 
the boy where he lived, and he shewed us a little girl near his own 
age, who was standing by and knitting most composedly. This he 
said was his sister, and he would get her to go home with him and 
say how he became so dirtied, or he should be beaten; but she 
kept knitting on. We were provoked with her, and desired her 
to take her brother home; but she only continued to knit with 
more dogged diligence. At length the spirit of the bystanders 
became roused; they joined in our insisting that she should go 
borne with the poor lad, who all the while was crying piteously; 
but it was not till one good man seized her sternly by the arm and 
forced her along, that the little stoic would move a foot, or any- 
thing but her knitting-needles. 

A gentleman who was with us at the time, and who had resided 
long in Germany, said, that this apathy in a people who in their 
domestic relations and in their literature exhibited so much feeling, 
had often surprised and puzzled him. He said that in these very 
streets of Berlin, one day, he saw a woman fall down. She fell 
against the steps of a house, and the blood spouted from her mouth 
in a stream. She appeared to have burst a blood-vessel. The 
people stood to look at her, but no one attempted to raise her. 
He saw that her throat was filled with blood, and that unless she 
was raised and held forward, she would speedily be suffocated. 



210 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

He caught hold of her arm, and called upon them to help to raise 
her, or she would be lost; but no one for some time would touch 
her. He continued vehemently to cry out that the woman must 
not be lost, and that they must carry her into an apothecary's shop 
near. At length another person helped to raise her, and they were 
about to bear her into the shop, when the apothecary cried — "No! 
no! she must not come in here!" They tried a second and a 
third shop — it was in vain. All cried out it would occasion them 
trouble from the police, who would visit her there. The gentleman 
was then very indignant, and said: "What! for fear of some 
trouble would they suffer her to die in the street?" — "Oh!" they 
said, "they had not thought of that; they had been only thinking 
of the police regulations;" and they let her go in. It did not 
appear that there was a want of sympathy so much as of a power 
to break that habitual chain of caution, and that they much sooner 
comprehended that they might bring inconvenience on themselves, 
than that there was danger to the sufferer by their refusal. 

Such are a few of those cases that occur so commonly as to 
form a national feature, and undoubtedly to have given the Germans 
the character of heavy and phlegmatic. The same slowness is 
observable in jocose matters, as well as in serious ones. If you 
tell a German a capital joke, he is almost sure to look very blank, 
and you see that he has not taken it at all; but if you meet him the 
next day: "Ah!" he exclaims, "what a clever thing that was you 
told me last night." I heard an Englishman telling a young and 
very intelligent German the common story of a guide-post being 
set up somewhere in England, saying, "Road to such a place; 
but those who can't read may inquire at the blacksmith's shop." 
"Ah!" said the young man, "how very odd. Only think, if the 
blacksmith should be dead." He did not perceive the real absur- 
dity of the case of painting up directions for those who could not 
read; and when he was at length made sensible of it, which was not 
without some labour, "Ah !" said he, " noiv I see it — how very droll !" 

The etiquette of introduction in Germany, like the rule of the 
road there, is just the reverse of ours. In England, if you take a 
house in a new neighbourhood, such of your neighbours as wish to 
establish a friendly intercourse with you, will call upon you; but in 
Germany, the new comer, if he did not call on the old inhabitants. 



OF THE GERMANS. 21 1 

would never see a soul call on him. He must make the first 
advance. He must inquire who and what people are, and call on 
such as he fancies he should like to know. This is so repugnant 
to English ideas, that it forms a great obstacle to our acquaintance 
with the Germans. It seems an act of presumption to call without 
introduction on people, and yet nothiug in Germany is more 
common. If you take introductions to a place, it is the best way 
to send your letter and call the next day or so; for if you call with 
your letter in your hand, and not finding the party at home, leave 
it, it is ten to one that you hear no more of it. In England, the 
parties on whom you had thus called and left your credentials 
would speedily seek you out; but the German will most probably 
expect you to call again; and while you are wondering that you see 
nothing of him, he will wonder that he sees no more of you. 

Some of the German ladies have an overstrained delicacy and 
prudery about them, that form the most ridiculous contrast to the 
homeliness of their manners and language, and remind you of what 
Sam Slick says of the young American ladies putting the legs of 
their pianos into trousers. They use no circumlocution in expressions 
which, in England, are at least smoothed over, and reduced to a 
very convenient indefiniteness. Some of them will talk of sweating, 
and hawking and spitting, and will perpetrate these things too in 
company, as well as say them. But there is nothing which tends 
so much to confound ranks, and puzzle you as to the real standing 
of people, as the practice in this country of several families living in 
one house. Nobles may, and often do, let one or two stories of 
their house. You may have a Graf for your landlord, or a shoe- 
maker. This, while it is considered no degradation to the man of 
real property and rank, affords a serious opportunity to others, 
whose trade and dependence consists in letting lodgings, to impose 
on the English, and creates in them, while fresh to the country, 
the strangest uncertainty; at the same time that it leads them to 
the oddest conclusions as to the manners of the better classes of 
German society. While the graf, or the professor, lets part of his 
house, the genuine lodging-house keeper pretends to be a graf, or 
something approaching one. Our landlady, on our arrival at 
Heidelberg, pretended to possess a Baden patent of nobility, and 
to be somebody. She was, in fact, a very silly and mischievous 



\ 

212 SINGULAR MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 

woman; and while on the one hand she would affect to be frightened 
at the sight of a man in his morning gown and slippers, would, 
on the other, sit, of an afternoon, eating goose-grease with a bread- 
crust instead of a spoon, as a luxury ! With such strange mixtures 
of ranks and personages, it requires, at first, in the foreigner, the 
nicest discernment to decide who are, and who are not, real gentry, 
and to avoid the oddest errors in judging of established manners. 

The following jeu-d'esprit, though written in the merriment 
occasioned by some laughable circumstances arising out of this 
curious state of things, v is, at the same time, full enough of truth 
to serve as a salutary warning to persons new to the country. 

TAKE CARE OF YOUR DAUGHTERS! 
Says Hood to all Travellers bound for the Rhine, 
Provided with passport, that requisite docket, 
First listen to one little whisper of mine, 
Take care of your pocket, take care of your pocket! 
This is well for the Tourist; but if you stay longer, 
All ye who sail over, or drink German waters, 
There's a whisper that needs to be whispered much stronger, 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters! 
The robbers who once haunted every hill 
In that land of old castles, old beards, and old slaughters. 
Are dead — but their children are living there still — 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters! 
They'll smile, they'll embrace you, they'll lead you, most kind, 
All through the great woods, by the greenest of waters; 
Call your friendship their green-spot of life — oh! then mind! 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters! 
You'll live in one house, though on different floors — 
" Ah!" cry luckless wights, "it was thus that they caught us!" 
Love glides then so slyly through ill-fitting doors — 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters ! 
Your landlady quick, with her knitting will swim in, 
And tell you that though she lets lodgings by quarters, 
She's none of your common old lodging-house women — 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters! 
She's a Von ! she's a noble ! your equal at once, 
Her red-headed cubs are gems purest of waters — 
Man-traps and spring-guns may be set for your sons, 
But take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters ! 
Take heed how your friends 'neath such roof you invite, 
Or these cubs will fly after them o'er the sea-waters, 
And then you may shriek to those friends in affright — 
Take care of your daughters, take care of your daughters ! ! 



OF THE GERMANS. 213 

Shaking hands is a custom considered /entirely English, espe- 
cially with ladies. The Germans rush into each other's arms; and 
with such impetuosity, on some occasions, that we are acquainted 
with a youth, who is lamed for life through the very curious cir- 
cumstance of having entangled his legs with those of a young and 
dear friend whom he unexpectedly met, after a long absence, and 
was thus thrown down, and one of his legs injured. But they do 
not shake hands; and we advise all English gentlemen, on first 
going to Germany, to be careful not to shock the feelings of the 
ladies, and especially the young, with offering their hands. The \ 
great German salutation is that oi lifting the hat to one another, 
and to the ladies; and to such an extent is this carried, that a 
humorous, as well as argumentative pamphlet has been lately 
published,* by a very clever man, in Erfurt, who has been a good 
deal in England, recommending in preference, on many accounts, 
the English mode of salutation. He calculates that not less than 
six millions of dollars are yearly spent in the extra wear and tear of 
hats and caps in Germany, by this perpetual taking of them off to 
any one you meet, of whom you have the slightest knowledge. 



* Die Hut-Frage. oder der Missbrauch des Hut-abnehmens biem Griissen, 
bekampft aus socialen und raediscinischen Griinden. Erfurt und Leipzig. Ludwig 
Hilsenberg, 1841. 




(gKlAPTHK SSWIh 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 



Before the French invasion, what an old-fashioned state must 
Germany have been in! The Germans are naturally a most 
contented people. Contented with their mode of living, the daily 
round of their pursuits, with the state of things as they find 
them. There is no people of the same numbers, or possessing a 
territory of the same extent in Europe, who have shewn themselves 
so little disturbed by a thirst of foreign conquest and aggrandise- 
ment. If their neighbours would but let them alone, they would 
never meddle with their neighbours. If they had had the restless 
military ambitious disposition of the French, what a condition 
would Europe have been in! They have quarreled and fought 
enough in all conscience amongst themselves. That seemed to be 
a legacy of their feudal system, and of the jealousies arising out of 
the choice of their emperors, out of first one family and then 
another; with all the internal changes in the government of 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 215 

different states which followed, as well as of the martial character 
and love of freedom inherited from their ancestors. But beyond this, 
on almost all occasions, the Germans, as a people, have been the 
invaded and not invading nation. The Romans of old, and the 
French in more modern times, have overrun them, and have raised 
in them little other spirit than that of resisting and expelling 
their enemies, and then being quiet again. Nothing can be more 
demonstrative of this than that, notwithstanding the more aggres- 
sive character of Prussia and Austria, which give almost the only 
exceptions to the character just drawn, by the partition of Poland 
and the absorption of Hungary and Bohemia by the latter power, 
(for the Italian territories are part of the old imperial Prankish 
dominions), yet, at the period of the invasion of the French revo- 
lutionists, almost as many petty dynasties existed in this country 
as there are days in the year. 

In fact, before that period, the Germans seem to have lived 
pretty much as the Dannites did of old, 6t every man doing what 
seemed good in his own eyes." Little could have been the 
alteration in any thing for many generations. They must have 
lived on and on, — the bauers cultivating, the professors teaching 
and. dreaming, the gentry hunting in the woods, and the ladies 
cooking and knitting, just as their ancestors had done for ages. 
By what we see now, they must have been in a very homely con- 
dition indeed. The manual arts must have been very humble; 
their houses must have been very old-fashioned, ill furnished, and 
none of the cleanest. Their clothes, what an antique cut they 
must have had! Their locks, door-handles, keys, all sorts of house- 
hold utensils, their furniture, their carriages, their everything, how 
rude and homely they must have been ! What a length their hair 
must have grown then; what a length their coats must have been 
then; what a length their pipes; what a length their dreams! 
Washing could not have been much in fashion; for, even now, 
they are amazed at the English; and in the inns they more 
commonly give you a wine-bottle and an oval pie-dish, instead 
of a good capacious ewer and basin, than anything else. Such a 
thing as a piece of soap, or a slop-jar, you never see in the bed- 
room; and if you ask for water and a napkin, to wash your hands 
before dinner at an inn where you are not staying the night, they 



216 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

stare at you, and make a charge in the bill for it. As Diogenes 
said, on walking through the city, so would the old Germans have 
said, had they gone through a city in another country, " What 
heaps of things are here that I have no need of." Roads even 
they had none — they did not want them — they wanted only to stop 
at home, eat their sour kraut and sausages, smoke their pipes, and 
drink their beer. 

The French revolution was like an earthquake, which shook the 
Germans from their slumbers. The French swept through this 
country like a hurricane, hurling down many little states, and 
tearing up old customs and laws. Buonaparte, with his code and 
his imperative spirit, cleared away whole mountains of antiquated 
things, and made wide space for the new. The French language, 
French dress, French manners, which had been before repeatedly 
introduced, from the days of Louis XIV. and in those of Frederick 
the Great, once more grew prevalent. In the plays of Iffiand one 
sees striking pictures of the social condition and manners of 
Germany before the war. In Kotzebue, as striking ones of the 
changes introduced. He gives a very amusing picture in " Die 
Komodiant aus Liebe/" — The Comic Actress through Love, — of 
a family of the real old school, which has got one of its members 
inoculated with French court manners and notions, and is on the 
point of the son marrying a young lady who may be considered 
a representative of the change introduced, and existing since. 

There is the Oberforstmeister, chief forest-master, Von Westen, 
a genuine old German ; his wife a perfect pattern of the genuine 
old German wife. There are three brothers of the Oberforst- 
meister, who are thus described. The Colonel is a very jolly blade, 
who is as fond of laughing as Democritus, and to whom a bon-mot 
is as good as all the profound sayings of the Seven Wise Men of 
Greece. His brother, the Court Marschal, is an author. He has 
written a great work on the shoulder-knot of the pages, and 
another on the art of arranging the play-table. He is now engaged 
on his great work on etiquette, in eight volumes, and in three 
hundred and forty chapters, one of which contains very learned 
rules for one's behaviour towards the royal lap-dogs. The third, 
the Criminal Judge, disputes upon life and death, and cannot bear 
that any one should yield to him out of desire of peace, which he 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 217 

calls dying to avoid the trouble of eating. By the way he is a 
little rough. When nobody will contend with him, he treads on 
the tail of the sleeping clog, in order to hear him growl. Then he 
sets himself opposite, and growls at him again. There is a sister 
too, an old maid, a very natural character, w T ho saves drowning 
flies, but likes war because so many of those monstrous creatures, 
men, get shot in it ! 

The son has given to his intended a description of the various 
characters of the family, and when they come on an appointed day 
to meet her and her friends at an hotel in the neighbouring town, 
in order to see how they like her, she receives them in succession, 
and dressing herself according to their several tastes, addresses 
them as the sister of the bride ; in a style adapted to their indi- 
vidual notions, and so enchants them, that when they finally come 
to know who she really is, they are all equally delighted. The 
conversation with the father and mother may be given here, as 
presenting admirable notions of the mode of living and thinking 
in those days. 

The son announces the approach of his father, whom he says, 
" is a true old German blade, to whom every thing new is so hate- 
ful that one dare not congratulate him on the new-year. Once 
after a severe illness he was afraid of becoming deaf, and it was 
recommended that he should be galvanized, but as soon as he 
learned that this was a new invention he chased the doctor to the 
hangman. Geography was once his hobby, but since he has 
found so many towns called Newtown, and more especially that 
the old tow r ns have got new masters, he has cast away his Busching 
and Gaspari." The youth retreats, and this scene passes between 
the lady and her maid — 

Eliza (the lady). Give me my spinning-wheel. 
Lizetle. You know nothing about spinning. 
Eliza. That signifies nothing, if it only looks like it. 

Lixelte. Sing at the same same time, — " Hurre, hurre, hurre, schnurre, my 
wheel, scburre." 

Eliza. Heaven forbid ! a song of Burger's ! That is much too new. 
Eizette. I hear a pair of great jack-boots on the stairs. 
Eliza. Draw thyself directly into the background. 

[Enter the Oberforstmeister.] 
Oberf. Your servant. 
Eliza (very demurely). God greet you ! 



218 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 



Oberf. Thank you, thank you. That is a brave greeting, which one hears 
seldom now-a-days. 

Eliza. Because now-a-days one does not hear much that is good. 

Oberf. Very true my dear girl, or Miss — I know not how you style yourself. 

Eliza. Maiden, hear I most gladly. I am a sister of the Frau Von Sternthal. 

Oberf. Whom my son is for marrying ? 

Eliza (rises'). Ah ! are you the Herr Oberforstmeister? You are welcome (she 
shakes him heartily by the hand), I have heard much good of you. 

Oberf. That rejoices me. 

Eliza. Permit me to seat myself. I cannot bear to be idle. 

Oberf. A hearty child, after the old fashion. 

Eliza. I have been desired to point out your chamber to you. It is there, No. 5. 

Oberf. Chamber ! right brave. A fashionable puppet would have said — room. 

Eliza. Shall I prepare you some warm beer, with honey in it? 

Oberf. Do you understand that ? 

Eliza. It is my daily breakfast. 

Oberf. What do I see and hear ? Dear child, do you live thus after the good 
old fashion of our fathers ? 

Eliza. Ah ! it is my only trouble that I was born a hundred years too late. 

Oberf. There you are right. In our days — 

Eliza. What manners! What morals! 

Oberf. Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Eliza. Youth thinks itself old — 

Oberf. And age makes itself young. 

Eliza. The mothers go to tea — 

Oberf. And the fathers to the club. 

Eliza. The daughters wrap themselves in costly shawls — 

Oberf. And the sons cultivate whiskers. 

Eliza. To prate French, is called being well educated. 

Oberf. But when one asks, when did Doctor Martin Luther live, then comes the 
answer, " Three hundred years before Christ." 

Eliza. People go to the theatre rather than to the church. 

Oberf. People read Schiller rather than Gellert. 

Eliza. They breakfast towards evening — 

Oberf. They dine about sunset. 

Eliza. They occupy twenty rooms — 

Oberf. And are at home in none of them. 

Eliza. Coffee steams up before every journeyman. 

Oberf. Wine drives the noble juice of the barley out of doors. 

Eliza. Without cards there is no happiness ; 

Oberf And no respectably old l'hombre. 

Eliza. Shameless style of dressing — 

Oberf. The fig-leaves scarcely cover them at all now. 

Eliza. And thence a thousand new complaints. 

Oberf The nervous affections, they call 'em. 

Eliza. Our ancestors had nerves too — 

Oberf. Like strings. 

Eliza. And Love! I Ierr Oberforstmeister — Love! 



SOCIAL LIFE AM) HABITS. 219 

Oberf, That was formerly a respectable personage. 

Eliza. Now people speak of him without hesitation, — just as they do of the 
weather. 

Oberf. And of lyings-in, as of a walk. 

Eliza. Girls are come to that pitch, they stare their lovers in the very eyes ! 

Oberf. And the lovers to that of talking of marriage before they have said a 
word of it to the father. 

Eliza. The ladies steal away to literary lectures. 

Oberf. To stare and be stared at. 

Eliza. O ! they are wicked, wicked times. 

Oberf. The devil is now the devil indeed! 

Eliza. The noble old Germanity is gone to the grave. 

Oberf. It has been poisoned. 

Eliza. Foreign manners — a foreign yoke. 

Oberf. One must creep into a badger's hole, if one would not see what is going 
on abroad. 

Eliza. O ! those good old times ! When the father read a sermon on Sunday 
in his family circle, and the mother, exactly as the clock struck twelve, set on the 
table the pewter dish of strong soup, which she had cooked herself. When at evening 
the spinning-wheel of the maid whirred to the gentry in the sitting-room, and at 
nine o'clock the evening blessing read out of the worthy Schmolke wound up the day. 

Oberf. (quite moved). Ah yes, the worthy Schmolke ! 

Eliza. When at early morning " Wake up, my heart, and sing," resounded from 
every house floor. 

Oberf. (nearly in tears). Oh yes, " Wake up, my heart, and sing." 

Eliza. And the daughters clean washed, nicely combed, in dresses spun by them- 
selves, came to kiss the father's hand. 

Oberf. Yes; thus it was in my father's house. My dear child, you move me 
inexpressibly. God bless you, what is your name? 

Eliza. Martha. 

Oberf. A fine old name. What is your sister called, then ? 

Eliza. Eliza. 

Oberf. Fie! the devil ! But the name does not signify so much. One can call 
her Elizabeth. Is she like you? 

Eliza. With some difference. 

Oberf. I mean in discipline and honesty. 9 

Eliza. Why yes; — she has lived in the great world. 

Oberf. The cursed great world ! Through that the little world in one's heart is 
gone to destruction. We seek everything out of us; while in us — God forgive me! 
— there is nothing now to find. All our striving after enjoyment seems to me like 
our balloon-travelling, where the chief luck consists in a man coming to the earth 
again without breaking his neck. Till we meet again, dear Fraulein ! Had my 
lad Gottlieb been so discreet as to have chosen you, I would have said Amen ! 
Amen ! — (retires by a side door.) 

The young lady puts away her spinning-wheel, calls for her 
brilliant earrings, her rings, her fan, rouges herself well at 
the glass, and prepares to receive the Hoff-Marschal, the Obcr- 



220 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

forstmeister's brother, with whom she talks French, and is very- 
much of the fine lady, according to the manners and notions intro- 
duced by the French. Then comes the youth's mother, of whom 
the youth in announcing her says — " She lives and moves in 
kitchen and cellar, amongst the fowls and the linen-bleaching. 
In summer she scolds the dew because it lies so long on the 
ground, and in winter because it rises so late. Cookery books are 
her library, and linen is her heart's delight." The damsel takes 
out her earrings, lays down her fan, washes off the rouge, calls for 
an apron and a bunch of keys, and puts a cajD on. 

Mother (entering). My God ! how dirty the steps are ! 

Eliza. There you are right, good lady, and yet this hotel is called an hotel garni, 
and reckoned one of the best. When one is accustomed at home to order and clean- 
liness, one might be in despair over all this dirt and dust. In the meantime I have 
ordered the maid very strictly to sweep your chamber three times out. 

Mother. I thank you, my dear young woman. Do you belong to the house? 

Eliza. Heaven forbid ! I am a sister of the Frau von Sternthal. My name is 
G retch en. 

Mother. So ! The future sister-in-law of my son. 

Eliza. If God will. 

Mother. Quite right, my Fraulein. The will of God has not yet, however, very 
clearly declared itself. 

Eliza. It is all one to me, so that we can but get quickly out of the city again. 

Mother. You love the country ? 

Eliza. Ah ! good lady, where had one rather be than in one's own yard, where 
the loveliest hens, the proudest geese, cackle and quackle about one ; where the 
sickle rings, and the butter churn clappers? What prospect is so charming as 
heaven-blue fields, where the future flax blooms ? What sound is more delightful 
to a brave housewife than the first bleat of a hopeful calf? 

Mother. Very true. A field of luxuriant flax, — the heart leaps at the sight of it! 

Eliza. One sees already the linen bleaching on the grass. 

Mother. One measures it already with the yardwand, and packs it in imagination 
in the well-preserved chests. 

Eliza. Did you see the kitchen as you passed? And the cook, with whose apron 
to all appearance they have swept the chimney? 

Mother. Oh ! it horrifies me yet when I think of it. 

Eliza. I pride myself in my clean hearth, in my shining dishes. 

Mother. Do you go yourself into the kitchen? 

Eliza. I am not ashamed of that. 

Mother. You may be proud of it. 

Eliza. My acquirements in the whole art of cookery are truly yet but small. I 
draw them entirely from books. 

Mother. Yes, we have an abundance of cookery books. The Viennese may hi 
a very good one; the Bavarian is not to be despised; the Prussian is celebrated. 

Eliza. I avail myself of the Swedish. 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS 221 

Mother. That of Miss Warg; — also good. But one always does better when 
one enjoys the oral instructions of an experienced person. 

Eliza. Yes, if ever that luck could be mine; if I could but come to school to 
you, gracious lady, in four weeks I should be a perfect housekeeper. 

Mother. Nay, nay ! it goes not so fast as that. I have studied and practised 
twenty years. 

Eliza. Twenty years ! 

Mother. This is no jurisprudence, my child, or philosophy, that a man can make 
himself master of in three years or so. 

Eliza. Yet what science can boast itself of working so immediately on the 
happiness of mankind"? 

Mother. None. 

Eliza. All that proceeds unquestionably from the stomach. A contented 
stomach makes a contented heart; and never are men so susceptible of all good as 
when they are fed to their heart's content. 

Mother. A sublime truth ! 

Eliza. The best husband frowns when the soup is burnt ; but the features of 
the surliest fellow brighten up when the savoury dish steams up against him. 

Mother. Incontrovertibly. 

Eliza. Whence springs every evil in the world? — Out of bad digestion. And 
whence bad digestion? — Out of indifferent cookery. 

Mother. Truly. There wants seasoning. 

Eliza. Therefore the body-and-mouth cook is the chief officer of a mighty 
prince. War and peace proceed out of his spke-cupboard. Who can tell what 
would now be the aspect of things in Europe if Frederick the Second had eaten no 
polenka? 

Mother. And Esau's dish of lentils, that plays a great part in history, — and, 
without doubt, was superbly prepared. 

Eliza. O thou noblest of arts ! Thou nourisher of the loftiest thought ! Thou 
unwearied creator of social joys ! Thou only art able to unite at one table familiarly, 
genius and stupidity ! Thou bribest the judge, who probably would despise gold! 
Thou assemblest poets and statesmen around those to whom, without thee, nobody 
would come! Thou awardest the noblest fame — the highest which man can acquire 
in the state, — so that men say of him, He gives good dinners! 

Mother. Thy generous enthusiasm, my Fraulein, enchants me. You deserve 
that your talents should be cultivated to the utmost. But let not the kitchen alone 
be your great aim. Never forget that kings' daughters tended their herds, and that 
Penelope weaved with her own hands. 

Eliza. Oh ! who feels greater tenderness than I for a lovely herd with their bells 
chiming the sun to rest. 

Mother. But hear me ; — how do you feed your calves? 

Eliza (aside). Alas ! I never reared a calf in my life ! 

Mother. I know very well that there are people who call themselves philanthro- 
pists, who ask first after the bringing up of children. There is one Pestalozzi, of 
whom there is much talk now, and yet I '11 bet a trifle that I could give him a puzzler. 
The children, good God ! they grow up — they are brought up of themselves; but the 
dear cattle, they must be nourished and cherished, if they are to prosper. So, to 
come again to the calves, how do you proceed with these noble youngsters? 



222 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 



( 



Eliza. Ah, good lady ! what shall I say ? I feed them. 

Mother. Ay, of course; but how? with what? how often? how much? how 
long? 

Eliza. There remains much for me here also to learn, and with veneration 
regard I my sublime pattern. When in our neighbourhood doubts as to the best 
management arise, immediately it is said, "Go only to Frau Von Westen ; you 
must ask the Frau Von Westen that." And whoever has been so happy as with his 
own eyes to admire your activity and skill, comes home full of your fame. 

Mother. O yes ! I let no grass grow under my feet. But, to come again to 
the calves — 

Eliza. Your linen then, would fill a whole warehouse! 

Mother. Yes, God has blessed me with linen indeed. Linen, my dear child, is 
the most convincing sign of a good housewife. This must she from year to year 
collect and hoard up, — whether she want it or not, no matter, — till her chests burst 
and cupboards crack again. 

Eliza. I burn with impatience to gaze on your treasures. 

Mother. I preserve it solely in order to shew it to my female friends. There 
you shall see linen that challenges Silesia, Holland, and Westphalia. 

Eliza. How would my eyes riot amongst it ! 

Mother. Has your sister also a turn and a taste for housewifery ? 

Eliza. Rather for music. 

Mother. Oh music ! for that, I have birds in the garden that play music all day 
long. And is it not true, my Fraulein, that when a proud herd lows, that sounds 
quite another thing? 

Eliza. Ah, indeed ! quite another thing! 

Mother. Farewell, my good child. You are a sensible person. It will give me 
pleasure to allow you to copy out my receipt-book, 

Eliza. This unmerited generosity. 

Mother. For a well-instructed housewife, there is no greater pleasure in the 
world than to impart good counsel, and to make all things better understood. 
(Aside) Where was my son's head, that his choice did not light on sister Gretchen. 

[ Exit. 

Since that time another and more important and permanent 
influence has triumphed over that of the French. French dress 
and French literature still continue to be cultivated; but the 
English literature has produced a far more decided effect, and the 
introduction of English notions, English manners, and above all, 
English manufactures and arts, especially the use of steam, — these 
are elements which are perpetually at work, and are every day 
effecting a steady progressive alteration of the system, aspect, 
character, and feeling of social life. To our eyes the difference 
yet seems wide. We regard with wonder the simple style of 
furnishing; the early hours; the old-fashioned habits and amuse- 
ments; the spitting and smoking; the cooking and housewifery 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 223 



s 



habits of the ladies ; and many other things, as bringing back to 
us an image of what England was three hundred years ago. Yet 
something of this is every day silently gliding away. Rooms are 
becoming more and more carpeted in winter; spitting is put under 
daily more restraint; smoking is not allowed in the streets of the 
chief cities, nor in any good society, in company. Hours at balls 
and parties grow later and later; the old household sports fall 
more anct more before the more fashionable amusements, of balls, 
conceits, theatres, operas, and such things; and it may be feared 
that only too soon these worthy Germans will not only much nearer 
resemble us in their notions of luxury and refinement, but too 
much so in all that loss of quietness, of contentment with simple 
pleasures, and of hearty equality of intercourse, which prevail in a 
more artificial condition of society. 

Let us sketch them and their social life, as they at present 
appear before us. Our children, twenty years hence, looking on 
this description, will at once become sensible of a wonderful change 
in these matters. 




'i*¥ * 



r -.' 



r. . 






(gfrHAIPTilR ^WQO a 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS — CONTINUED. 



Many of the traits of the good people, depicted in the last chapter, 
are still the national traits. The dislike of change in the men, the 
cooking and linen mania of the ladies, are yet very general. But 
before we plunge into the social life of the cultivated classes, we 
must, according to our mode, give a slight glance at that of the 
great mass — the common people. This need not, however, detain 
us long, for their social life presents no great variety of feature. 
Their houses, as we have said, are commonly strongly built, dull, 
and uninviting to an English eye. The perpetual employment of 
every member of the family in the fields, destroys all that domestic 
neatness and ornament which one sees in the rural class in England. 
Around their houses are no gardens full of flowers; up their walls 
are trained no roses, no jasmines, caucorus, or honeysuckle, diffusing 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 225 

their fragrance around. On the contrary, the houses of the 
peasantry are generally so built that the cow or cows, the pigs and 
hens, with their family utensils, occupy the ground-floor; and in 
front, or on one side, grows, instead of wallflowers and polyanthuses, 
a manure heap. In the house itself, a black stove, instead of a 
bright fire, gives a cheerless look to the apartment. It is dirty, 
and often pestiferous with unsavory smells, of which the inhabitants 
appear totally unconscious. There is, as in country cottages in 
England, a dresser and set of shelves, on which are ranged their 
plates, etc. A spinning-wheel is still a regular part of the furni- 
ture, and it is only in these rustic cottages that you see beds with 
curtains. Through the whole country besides, amongst all classes, 
the people occupy those small beds without posts, and adapted to 
one person. 

The working people, during the summer months, find their 
chief amusement in their Sunday dance at the wirthshouse, where 
the young dance and the older look on, take their pipe and beer, 
and talk over the crops and the news; in their kirchweighs, and 
such things. The men, as in England, are great frequenters of" the 
public-houses, where they all talk, smoke and drink together, while 
the women at home get their children to bed, do the necessary 
mending and ordering of their affairs, and gossip a little besides. 
In winter, when they cannot go much out, the neighbours get 
often together around the stove, especially in the evenings, and tell 
over all the sagas and legends of the country, of which every place 
has abundance, or read their kalendar, or their folks-books, cheap 
little books bought at the fairs, which contain many of the old 
legends and stories extracted from the old romances, of which we 
shall speak elsewhere. 

It is through the winter that they are busy dressing their hemp 
and flax, and the women all spinning and knitting. In an evening- 
it is a common custom for the women to take their wheels and 
meet together at their houses in rotation, where they tell endless 
stories, and make themselves very.rnerry, while their husbands are 
at the wirthshouse; and these, as in all other countries, are " the 
short and simple annals of the poor." 

In the middle classes, the simple furnishing and simple habits 
are very striking to strangers. They are generally very fond of 

Q 



226 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

living in large houses, rather than in what the Scotch call self- 
contained houses, that is, houses adapted for only one family each. 
Like the Scotch, they prefer houses in which a family can live on 
every separate story, and there are commonly two or three families 
of the most respectable and wealthy class in one house. One of 
those round-headed doorways, already spoken of, often forms the 
entrance; and it is quite a tour of discovery to find the family you 
want in it. You see two or three bell-handles on the outside, 
sometimes with Oben written under one, Unten under another, 
and Dritten Stock under a third. If you have not already possessed 
yourself of the exact information in which stock or story the family 
that you want resides, you must pull a bell at guess, for the name 
of the occupier of each stock nowhere appears. When you have 
done this, in awhile you hear a click, and the door opens itself an 
inch or so. This is a sign that you can enter. You push back the 
door, and find yourself, if it is one of those great round-headed 
ones just mentioned, in an entrance to a court-yard. On either 
hand, in the gateway, are doors; probably on either hand a stair- 
case, but not a soul to be seen, for the door has been opened by a 
wire, which is pulled from the house to which the bell you have 
rung belongs, and you are expected to walk up or walk in; but as 
there is no name-plate on any door, you feel that if you knock you 
may disturb two or three families before you come to the right one. 
Before you is a large court, surrounded with buildings, and probably 
containing heaps of fire-wood, and perhaps linen drying. If, 
instead of the great round-headed door, you have entered at one 
of less dimensions, you find yourself, instead of at the entrance to 
this open yard, at the foot of a great common stone staircase; but 
you are equally at a loss to find anybody to tell you exactly where 
the family you seek lives. No person is there, no servant comes 
out to inquire and direct you, for each house cannot trouble itself 
about people that may be going to their neighbours. A stranger, 
therefore, feels himself as much at a loss as in a wood without a 
path. There is a solitude around him that amazes, and the self- 
opening of the outer door, and the non-appearance of anybody 
within, give him a feeling of an enchanted castle. lie soon learns 
from an experiment or two of this sort, that it is equally as requisite 
for him before calling at a strange house, to inform himself exactly 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. .i'.'T 

of the story in which the family resides, as of the house itself. If 
he have not done this, his only plan is to knock at the first door 
that he comes to; if somebody answers, to enter; and, if he be 
lucky, he will soon see a dirty maid-servant most probably issue 
from her kitchen, or come out above and look down through the 
banisters of the stairs at him, from whom he may learn where the 
family he seeks may be found. It is, however, quite as possible 
that at the very first door at which he knocks, be will hear some- 
body within call out "herein." "come in," for this is the usual 
practice. Instead, when a knock comes, of some one opening the 
door, as we do, they are so accustomed to have the wrong persons 
coming, that they let them take the trouble of coming in themselves. 
They therefore call out " herein," and you must open the door and 
march in, when it is very probable that, instead of your friends, 
you will find yourself in the midst of a large party at dinner; or in 
the study of a rusty old professor, five fathoms deep in his books 
and his next lecture ; or will disturb the tete-a-tete of two lovers, 
or two ladies plunged in matters of as deep moment; or will rouse 
some worthy Hofrath from settling the affairs of the state. Though 
these mistakes are rather annoying to you, they are generally taken 
in the best humour by those thus broken in upon, for they are 
matters of daily occurrence. We have, however, witnessed instances 
in which the unlucky visitor has been received with very freezing 
and disdainful looks, which said as plainly as looks could do — 
" Mr. Blockhead, do mind another time and inform yourself of the 
stock." 

The living, indeed, in these houses, exposes you to many visits 
that, to say the least, are troublesome. As there is no porter, any- 
body walks in that is so disposed. The bell is pulled, the door is 
opened, and the house is at the mercy of the enterer. Whatever 
he be, he has now the range of the house before him. He has 
only to present himself at every door in turn, and he is bade to 
walk in. You are thus often surprised by the most unexpected 
guests. Now it is a beggar, with a troop of ragged children at 
his or her heels. Now a wandering gesell, or journeyman, with 
his knapsack on his back, who wants to beg a trifle too, to carry 
him to the next town, or, as has occurred to us, has taken the 
house for an inn, and wants to know if he can stay all night. 

q2 



228 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

Now it is a wandering tradesman, a seller of eau de Cologne or 
some such thing, or a tradesman out of the town, who stalks in 
with a great bundle, makes his bow, and with all imaginable 
gravity begins unfolding his wares, and informs the lady that he 
thinks this and that is just what the " gn'adige Frau" has sent for; 
when both you and he at the same moment become aware, to 
mutual astonishment, that it is the " gnadige Frau" upstairs, or 
downstairs, that the good man really intends. In this manner, 
too, enter your rooms collectors of subscriptions, proposers of plays 
and concerts, speculators in lotteries; and in Catholic cities, monks 
with their little savealls in their hands, collecting for the hospitals. 
As your bed-rooms are all on the same floor, it is quite as likely 
that such early visitors as the monks or begging students will 
walk into your bed-room as your sitting-room, to your and then- 
mutual shock, perhaps, as you are not quite half dressed; and 
therefore, especially in inns, it behoves you to be very careful to 
have your door locked till you are ready to issue forth. 

People may, if they please, and often do, walk into a varietyof 
rooms before they find anybody. It would be the easiest thiDg in 
the world for a designing person to walk into these houses, go 
into rooms where nobody was, help themselves to any small 
valuables that were lying about, and go out again without the 
slightest suspicion, for any one who chanced to see them would 
suppose they had been to one of the other families on business. 

The interior of German houses have, to English eyes, always a 
somewhat naked look. This arises, in a great measure, from the 
absence of carpets. You approach by uncarpeted stairs, and then 
find yourself on naked boarded floors. These floors are generally 
made of broad boards of pine, laid in squares of a large size in 
framework of oak. The pine is generally kept clean scoured, and 
the framework dark with paint or oil. In others, the floors are 
coloured of a reddish yellow, with a preparation of wax, which 
is kept bright and clean by a hard and heavily-weighted brush. 
And here, contrary to the condition of the houses of the common 
people, and of too many of the lower grade of the burgher class, all 
is extremely neat and clean. The floors, though of deal, arc so 
white, or are so bright where coloured, that they give a very agree- 
able feeling of cleanliness, and the furniture, though often plain, 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 289 

is equally clean and neat too. There is an air of elegance about a 
good bouse, which makes up, in some measure, for the richness 
and wealth of ornament that we are accustomed to in England. 
In many cases, again, the floors are of hard and handsome woods, 
laid down in squares, or in graceful patterns of different colours, 
in a mosaic style, and richly polished. In the palaces and 
houses of the nobility and wealthy gentry, in winter, carpets are 
laid down; and in summer these inlaid floors are very tasteful, 
agreeably cool, and sometimes of singular classic beauty. 

The Germans too are very fond of handsome ceilings ; and these 
have often more labour and expense bestowed on them than any 
other part of the house. They are fond of having them painted 
in broad arabesque borders, and departments of gay colours; of 
having the walls too painted in a similar style, in a deep band 
below the cornice, of classical figures and scenes in fresco, on these 
and on their ceilings. Paintings in frames are not so numerously 
found in private houses as in England. These belong more to 
palaces and galleries. But you find casts, good engravings, and 
books in abundance. Add to these a not too crowded number of 
chairs, tables, looking-glasses, bureaus, and cheffoniers, in many 
parts of Germany of beautiful dark walnut wood, and you have a 
tolerable idea of a German drawing-room. Nowhere, not even in 
palaces, do you find that air of richness, of snugness, of splendour, 
— in short, of general wealth and luxury, as you do in England; 
you find a plain and tasteful, and often more classic elegance. 
The stove is often a great eyesore to the room, being of black 
cast iron, with its pipe carried up in various winding shapes so as to 
throw out as much heat as possible. Smarter ones, of square cast- 
iron work painted, are frequent, and still handsomer ones of porce- 
lain; but what is gained in beauty is generally lost in heat. Many 
of these stoves have no opening in the room, but are fed from the 
passage without, into which all the stoves of the story open, and 
where their mouths are concealed by doors, looking like so many 
cupboards ; and in winter it is a good part of the work of one ser- 
vant in a large family to go round and keep the fires in order. 

The Germans endeavour to persuade themselves and you, that 
these stoves are much superior to our fireplaces. That our backs 
are starved in our rooms while our faces burn, and so on; but 



230 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

nothing can make up to the English for the cordial brightness 
and friendly glow of their hearths; and we find that when Germans 
come to England,, they are invariably enraptured with our fires, 
and the beauty of our chimney-pieces, and all their ornamental 
accompaniments. Stoves are a great comfort in chambers, where 
you want the air tempering only; but in sitting-rooms, nothing 
but the absence of coals and the deamess of wood are the real 
causes of the use of stoves. In Germany, coal is uncommon, and 
wood is generally as dear as coal in London. A house with four 
fires cannot be well supplied with wood under 30/. a-year. 

One good thing connected with this is, that you never see boys 
employed as chimney-sweeps. Sweeping by climbing is totally 
unknown. All the sweeps are full-grown men, who in a close 
dress, and as close caps of black leather, come two at a time, 
generally, and with their machinery clean the chimneys. They, 
like almost every thing, are under the regulation of the police, and 
come into your house, at stated periods, without your sending 
for them, or asking your leave; walking up stairs and down 
stairs, at their pleasure, with their ladder and scraper and besom, 
and other machinery; clean out all your chimneys, and make you 
the charge fixed by law. These men are generally very well 
behaved, but take things very coolly. One day, as I sat in the 
drawing-room writing, I heard a sudden thumping and rushing 
in the chimney. Presently the stove-pipe, where it entered the 
ceiling, was driven violently down. A round iron ball, as big as 
a cricket-ball, made its appearance, and after it a sort of besom. 
The sweep had dropped his machinery into a wrong flue, and 
and finding it did not descend so far as he wanted it, had dropped 
his weight with such force that it carried all before it. Astonished 
at this sudden apparition, and at the stove-pipes tumbling into the 
room, I ran out, and alarmed the active but unconscious operative. 
The maid had just left all in nicest order; the wood soot had burst 
out in a dense cloud and filled the room, settling on chairs, tables, 
curtains, every thing, enough to craze the brain of a housemaid, 
and more especially of the mistress. "Ah!" said the black 
knight, "it is nothing particular, nothing at all particular." He 
clapped his sooty ladder against the beautifully light-coloured and 
perfectly new paper; knocked up the. stovc-pipes again, trod the 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 231 

soot and dust unmercifully into the nicely waxed floor, let fall his 
heavy iron scraper, of at least four pounds weight, on the toe of 
a bystander, and repeating that it was nothing at all particular, 
asked for his money, and withdrew. 

Early hours and simple living distinguish the Germans. Three 
meals a-day are the usual order. The common people are astir 
extremely early, especially in summer, when wagons and carriages 
begin to roll about at two o'clock; and after that time, every hour 
becomes more lively with the country people proceeding to the 
town with articles for market. "The cooks and good housewives 
are off to market to make their purchases for the day at five and 
six o'clock. The peasant girls, of course, before that hour, are 
going along in streams, with their tubs or baskets on their heads, 
full of vegetables, eggs, milk, fruit, etc. Men who get up early to 
study, or to work, often take some coffee directly they come down, 
and then breakfast with their family at six or seven o'clock in 
summer. This breakfast is, generally, simply coffee and bread, 
mostly without butter. Dinner is on table at twelve or one. The 
German cookery abounds in soups, vegetables, and sausages, of 
various kinds, sour kraut, of course, salads of as many kinds, amongst 
which a particular salad, made of cold potatoes with vinegar and 
anchovies, is a great favourite. Their meat, like most continental 
meat, is very lean. Their beef, though lean, good; their bullocks 
being fine, but killed just at that state in which we should begin 
to feed them. Their mutton is generally very bad; the sheep 
being kept principally for the wool, and never fed, like ours. Veal 
is killed at about a week old, and is very poor and tasteless. 
Hood's description of a big man, with a big stick, and a big dog, 
driving a week-old calf, is of every-day realization in the street. 
Lamb has no resemblance whatever to that most princely of 
luxuries in England; and, what is worse, the green peas are 
always spoiled by being gathered before they have any kernel, and 
by being cooked with sugar. Fowls they have in plenty, and 
cheap, but never well fed. Geese, on the contrary, are regularly 
crammed, when alive, with Indian corn; and are stuffed in the 
cooking with chestnuts. They are often, however, to our taste, 
spoiled by the plentiful addition of raisins. Hares are cheap; the 
common price being a shilling, and are good. Cheese is very 



232 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

indifferent, and little eaten at table. Their beer is a weak table- 
beer, very strong of bop, very wholesome, and, with a little use, 
very agreeable; but, in the wine districts, wine is much more 
drank at table, being quite as cheap, and in summer being very 
pleasant, from its weakness and its subacid flavour. 

Of puddings they have a variety, and very tolerable. After 
dinner, a cup of coffee is generally taken. Tea is by no means a 
general afternoon beverage. Of late years it has been more and 
more introduced; but in the greater number of families is not 
drank except when they have visitors, and then one or two cups is 
all that they can master. They complain that tea makes them 
drunk, makes their heads ache, heats them, gives them red noses, 
and, in fact, has all the effects of spirituous liquors on them. The 
mode in which the English drink off their three, four, or five cups 
occasionally, is to them amazing, but more so the strength of it. 
You have to water your tea for your German visitors till it is really 
not tea, but milk and water; and if you allowed the waiters at inns 
to make tea for you, it would require a good microscope to find 
the tea-leaves in the pot. Such is the effect of custom. German 
families, in general, therefore, have their Abends-essen, or supper, 
about seven o' clock. This consists very much of cold sliced meat, 
sausages, potato-sallad, and such like. The eating of meat suppers 
and drinking of no tea probably produces the common effect, that 
they require in the morning to supply themselves with that fluid 
which we take at tea-time. The first thing, therefore, that you see 
a German do at breakfast, is to toss off a large glass of cold water. 
Numbers, if they did not get their dose of cold water, could not 
eat a bit of breakfast. 

At inns, the English are universally known by calling for tea. 
In the evening, when you come into their table-d ; hotc rooms, you 
find everybody eating suppers, often hot suppers. The English 
call for their tea, and in many parts of Germany get very bad, as 
well as much dearer than supper; but coffee is everywhere to be 
had of the most excellent quality. One reason for this excellent 
coffee is, that it is always roasted at home, and therefore is fresh 
roasted. Every German servant can roast coffee; and often when 
she is hardly lit for anything else, with a common earthen pot and 
an iron spoon, will on the kitchen stove roast you coffee to a nicety. 



SOI 1 VI. LIFE VXD HABITS. 233 

During the day, while the men are at their various avocations, 
the ladies are busy in their kitchens, or amongst their linen, or are 
sewing or knitting as if : their lives depended on the labour. The 
hoarding of linen and of stockings is just as great a passion with 
most German ladies as with the Frau von Westen. Spinning- 
wheels abound, and are to be seen in the houses of many people of 
great pretensions; in still more of the burgher class, and in every 
house of the common people. The rock is often bound about with 
a gay broad ribbon, and the wheel itself is very neat. Linen is 
hoarded up in such quantities, that washing-days come in very 
many families but once a quarter, in many even but once a year; 
and I have heard of one wealthy family where the master's shirts 
Avere only gone through in six years. Most gentlemen now have 
their gross of shirts, and other things in proportion. The quantity 
of beautiful table-linen, napkins for the table and the chambers, 
and all such things, would be a cordial to any good housewife's 
soul. The knitting of stockings is an everlasting job. At home 
and abroad, Sundays and week-days, in private parties and at 
public out-of-door concerts and in public gardens, the dear, good, 
industrious souls sit knitting and smiling and gossiping in the 
seventh heaven of delight. It is to be hoped that there is a German 
heaven where knitting is one of the appointed rewards of virtue; 
for without the idea of the eternity of knitting-needles, what 
German lady could look forward with any comfort. 

('(joking is equally a lady's pleasure. The education of a 
German lady is to us a very singular one. It is composed of the 
two extremes of household usefulness and social ornament. Accom- 
plishments are carefully taught. All that tends to give the ladies 
eclat in the ball-room and in large companies, they are more 
regularly drilled into even than ours. Music and dancing are 
indispensable. The French language has long been universal, and 
English is now becoming so. Their greater intercourse with 
foreigners keeps in use their French. Music is so much a national 
enjoyment, that not only all young women, but almost all young 
men play on the piano and sing. This is not only a great relief to 
the monotony of private life, and an elegant and refining enjoy- 
ment for the evening circle, especially to weary men, harassed or 
exhausted by the daily tug of their affairs, — but is conducive to the 






234 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

pleasure of those agreeable little parties which abound so much 
amongst the Germans; where singing, a dance, and simple games, 
pass away rapidly the hours. Here there requires no hired musi- 
cians; one after another will sit down to the harp or piano; others 
will join in singing; and thus social pleasure can go forward most 
independently. So general are such accomplishments, that they 
are much less thought of — individuals pride themselves much 
less upon them than in England. They are rather regarded as 
the indispensable parts of education, as much so as reading and 
writing are. 

But the accomplishments of cooking and of domestic manage- 
ment are not the less cultivated. Ladies of rank and fortune are 
still plentiful, who spend their mornings in the kitchen, and are not 
contented with directing what shall be done, but are up to the 
elbows in flour, and as busy compounding salads and puddings as 
ever an old alchymist was in preparing his elixir of life. English 
notions on this hea,d are now very much infusing themselves, and 
no doubt it will not be long before it will be found that a lady can 
do far more with her eyes and her commands than she can do with 
her hands, and that it is a much better division of employment for 
servants to do the menial work, and for the ladies to be able skil- 
fully to see that all is done. In the present day, however, the old 
school has the predominance v Ladies are too much of practical 
cooks and housewives to be much visible before dinner; and there 
are those who have been for more than a year regular attendants of 
the kitchen of some great hotel, in order practically to learn all the 
sublime mysteries of cooking. 

The great defect of German female education is, that house- 
hold and social accomplishments are made the sum of their instruc- 
tion. The ladies of Germany, with many exceptions, are far below 
the English ladies, as desirable intellectual companions. Kinder 
or more attached and affectionate creatures cannot exist; but the 
good creatures must excuse me when [ say, that they too often 
resemble kind, dear creatures in England, that one might pick up 
out of the class of our maids and housekeepers, with the exception 
of the knowledge of music and French, who would make very 
inadequate companions of our intellectual tastes and pursuits, 
though they might possess all other virtues under heaven. They 






SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 235 

are not instructed in the more solid parts of general learning. 
In history, in geography, in the wide field of the world of polite 
literature, in which our English ladies are as much at home as 
ourselves, they are far, far behind these ladies. They read indeed, 
the romances and novels, and poetry, not only of their own country, 
but almost all the new novels of France, and England too, and 
truly it must be confessed, shew very little discrimination in their 
taste for these. Not only the works of Bulwer, Boz, Marryat, 
James, etc., but the most trashy tales of our inferior writers, which 
are puffed in England, are immediately translated, or reprinted in 
Germany, and as much read by ladies and the devourers of circulat- 
ing library pabulum, as they are at home. The men of any stand- 
ing, from the cheapness of a university education, generally receive 
such a one, and, as if from jealousy, seem to have a mortal aversion 
to the ladies possessing the same sort of information as themselves. 
There is, accordingly, a great vacuum in German literature, which 
in England is filled by a host of productions which are equally read 
and relished by men and women ; in which all matters of history, 
science, morals, and religion, are ably and profoundly, though not 
technically treated. German men are either writers of poetry and 
romance, or of strictly scientific and philosophical matters, and 
such things as female writers of first-rate eminence are extremely 
rare. A Caroline Pichler, a Gra'fin Hahn-Hahn, a Bettina von 
Arnim, a daughter of Tieck translating Shakspeare, are rare ex- 
ceptions. In fact, literary ladies are looked upon as a sort of 
pretty monsters, and accordingly, such a series of fine-minded, 
and noble-minded, and glorious women as adorn the world of 
English literature do not and cannot exist in Germany. In another 
chapter I give a notice of its female writers, but it would be a vain 
quest to seek there for a constellation like that of your Joanna 
Baillie, Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Howitt, Mrs. Norton, 
Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Macleod, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Southey, Mrs. 
Grant, Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Shelley, Mary Wolstencroft, Mrs. Gore, 
Mrs. Austin, Miss Austin, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Terrier, the 
Misses Porter, Mary Lamb, Mrs. Johnstone of Edinburgh, Mrs. 
Macaulcy, Mrs. Bray, Mrs. Tyghe, Mrs. Fletcher, Lady Dacre, 
Miss Hamilton, Miss Bengcr, Miss Barrett, Miss Laurence, Mrs. 
Loudon, Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Hannah More, and a host 



236 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

of other eminent women, who have diffused intelligence and fine 
feelings, and sound sense and morality, in a resistless tide through 
the households of England. But of women writing on astronomy, 
like Mrs. Somerville — or political economy, like Miss Martineau 
or Mrs. Loudon, the idea would be incredible, and would be enough 
to set the wigs of all the old philosophers and professors on fire. 

With the exception of scientific and historical English works, 
which are read by the scientific and historical men of Germany, 
very little besides the novels of England is read there. These 
are imported in shoals; but of such poetical writings as those of 
Campbell, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Mrs. Hemans, Southey, 
Wilson, Tennyson, Ebenezer Elliott, Rogers, Crabbe, Joanna Baillie, 
few have ever heard. The names of Miss Landon, Mrs. Southey, Miss 
Martineau, Mrs. Norton, Sergeant Talfourd, Sheridan Knowles, 
or of most of those introduced above, you can find few Germans who 
can recollect the mention of them, and scarcely a lady who has 
the slightest idea of their existence. And yet people talk of their 
acquaintance with modern English literature. 

How intellectual men find themselves satisfied with the topics 
on which many of their wives must of necessity entertain them, 
seems to us somewhat puzzling. But probably, as men of busi- 
ness naturally, after the labours of the day, resort to social amuse- 
ment, or a very light and gossiping kind of reading, as an antithesis 
and relaxation ; so the Germans, from their business and learned 
labours, find the same relaxation in the small talk of women who 
to us would seem better calculated for housekeepers and nurses 
than for intellectual companions. One thing, however, is certain, 
that there are not in the world more attached, affectionate, and 
domestically happy people than the Germans; and if their wives 
are not qualified to solve a mathematical problem with them, to 
discuss some point of history or politics, to enter into the religious 
questions of the day, or to decide on the excellence of some new 
work of taste, yet on the other hand, they do not so much pester 
them with demand of expensive pleasures, huge parties, splendid 
dresses and equipages, and all the unsatisfying and greedy dis- 
sipations of a more luxurious state of society. 

The simple and unexpensive manner in which they entertain 
i heir friends, and pass away the winter evenings, when they cannot 



SOCIAL LIFE AM) EABITS. 237 

get out to those open-air concerts, walks, and other amusements 
of which we have spoken above, might be introduced with infinite 
advantage into England. A simple cup of tea at six o'clock, 
music, perhaps a dance, and then as simple a supper of sandwiches, 
slices of sausage, a potato or other salad, a cake ornamented in 
various ways, but generally a sponge, a chocolate, or a fruit cake, 
a snow tart, with a few bottles of cheap wine, — these form the staple 
refreshments of those social evenings, which break up about ten 
or eleven o'clock. 

The young people on these occasions amuse themselves also 
with a vast variety of games which in England would be thought 
to be adapted rather to children than grown-up people, but which, 
however, occasion plenty of mirth, and indicate a state of society 
much more homely and ready to be pleased than ours. Among 
these stand eminent in favour "Die blinde Kuh," the blind cow; 
another name for blind-man's buff. They have various other games 
of forfeits. They write romances; each person furnishing a sentence 
without knowing what is written before him, so as to produce 
the most ludicrous medley. They put down the names of their 
acquaintances, each adding, without knowing to what name it is 
attached, a character, a circumstance, and what the world thinks of 
it ; which, when read aloud and in connexion, produces, through the 
oddest combinations, great merriment. They write questions and 
answers on separate strips of paper, which being hustled together 
and then read, the answers falling to the questions as it may happen, 
are generally very amusing. They have various card-plays of the 
same nature, chief amongst which stands Black Peter, which 
consists in a pack of cards being equally divided amongst the com- 
pany, and those which are of equal numbers being thrown out. He 
who is first out becomes the holder of a burnt cork, with which he 
makes a streak on the face of him or her who is found at last with 
Black Peter or the Knave of Clubs. The dislike of receiving this 
mark, especially by the ladies, and the different whims of making 
mustachios, whiskers, strokes down the nose, and so on, by the 
inflictor, produces all the fun. They have a game also w T ith flour, 
equally popular. The young people sit round a small table, on 
which a basinful of flour, tolerably hard pressed, is turned out on 
a plate, and on its top is laid a ring. Each person cuts a slice 



238 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

from the flour with a knife, and he or she at whose cut the centre 
flour falls, has to take the ring out of it with his or her mouth. 
This generally gives a very mealy visage and much laughter. 

Happy are the people where whole companies can amuse them- 
selves with such simple usages. The worst custom, however, of 
German social life, is that in evening parties of dividing the married 
from the unmarried, and often the men from the women. This is 
a custom now much gone out in the higher circles, but still very 
prevalent in all general society. You enter a house, the young and 
unmarried of your party are shewn into one room, you are conducted 
into another; the ladies get round one table, the gentlemen round 
another. The women talk of the gossip of the day; knit and talk 
of their knitting, of their servants; and the gentlemen of politics, 
or the like. Nothing is so admirably contrived as this old-fashioned 
practice to destroy all the advantages and pleasiu'es of social 
intercourse. You come into general society for general enjoyment 
and benefit; but that enjoyment and that benefit are most essen- 
tially promoted by old and young, men and women, being mixed, 
and not divided into clusters, or classes and orders, like so many 
plants in a hortus siccus, or stones in a mineralogical museum. It 
is a real enjoyment and refreshment for those of maturer years to 
gaze on the fresh happy countenances of youth, to hear their fresh 
and youthful remarks; and it must also be one of the greatest 
possible advantages to the young to enjoy the conversation and 
become participant in the knowledge of the older and more 
experienced. Ladies naturally wish in society to converse with 
gentlemen, and gentlemen with ladies. If politics or other general 
topics are introduced, ladies are calculated to keep these discussions 
within due bounds, and often to enter into them with a grace and 
life which give a peculiar- charm to them. Ail this exchange of 
pleasures and benefits, and the true end of society, are found in a 
general association, as they are equally defeated by this absurd 
old custom. To the English this is particularly irksome, and none 
feel the tediousness of it more than the ladies and the young. 

There is in Germany a particular disposition to establish little 
social companies. They have their Sing Vcrcine, their Manner 
Chores, their Licder Tiifcl, where the young of both sexes, and the 
musical, meet on stated days, for the purpose of singing. These 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 239 

are sources of great social pleasure, as well as of improvement in 
this particular object. They have in many towns, their Harmonie, 
or place of meeting for this purpose, where the amateur singers and 
musicians of the place sing and play on certain evenings. There 
you may see, in some, tradesmen and artisans, the business of the 
day being over, met with their song-books and their instruments, 
and the place crowded with their friends, hundreds of the humblest 
people of the city being wedged together in the densest mass, to 
enjoy the delight of music; in others, you find students; in others, 
all the most respectable young people of the place. In Berlin, these 
latter meet in a splendid music-hall, presented to them by the 
king, and in numbers to the amount of about three hundred. 

They have again their Frauen-gesellschaften and their Madcher- 
gesellschaften; their ladies' companies, and their young ladies' 
companies. There are tea, coffee, or chocolate parties, where only 
ladies are admitted; or where, as in the second, only young, un- 
married ladies are admitted. Here the young ladies boast that, 
freed from the restraint of men's presence, they can laugh and 
chatter to their hearts' content. In their meetings the women 
can talk on womanly affairs ; if they are fond of books, can have 
one read aloud to them; can discuss matters of domestic arrange- 
ment, and so on. But we have heard it whispered, out of school, 
that those meetings are the least in the world dull, and that the 
grand topic of discourse is the badness of servants. 

Of German servants we may here say a word. The genuine 
German maid-servant is one of the most healthy, homely, hard- 
working creatures under the sun. Like her fellows who work in 
fields, barns, and woods, she is as strong as a pony, and by no 
means particular as to what she is to do. She wears no cap or 
bonnet at home or abroad. Has a face and arms as stout and red 
as any that our farm girls can boast; and scours and sweeps, and 
drudges on, like a creature that has no will but to work and eat, 
and sleep. She goes to market with bare head, and in a large 
cloak. She turns out on a Saturday afternoon, with all the r^est 
of her tribe, with bucket and besom into the street, and then, about 
three or four o'clock, makes a perilous time of v it in the city. 
Before every door, water is flowing, and besoms are flirting the dirty 
puddle about. Each extends her labours not only to the pavement, 



240 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

if there be one; but to the middle of the street; so that they are, 
in fact, the city scavengers. German housewives complain dread- 
fully of their maids; but the maids themselves certainly lead hard 
and most laborious lives, such as our servants would not do. They 
address you with a sort of family familiarity which would be 
thought strange in England, but yet without anything like inso- 
lence, and are much more willing than English ones. You are 
not afraid, as you are in England, and especially in the neighbour- 
hood of London, that, at any order to do their work properly, they 
will turn and say, ""If I can't give satisfaction, I beg you to suit 
yourself with another." The worst of them is, that their German 
mistresses are accustomed to be so much with them, and give them 
immediate orders for the doing of almost evey thing, that they have 
seldom any idea of doing anything but what they are then and 
there told. They seem to act rather than to think, and to follow 
orders rather than to exercise foresight; so that, with English 
mistresses, they are continually letting out fires, leaving things 
uncooked, and committing similar negligences, totally because 
they live under the direction of their German mistresses, with no 
occasion to exercise their heads at all, but merely their hands. 

On the other hand, German servants have customs and privi- 
leges that would astonish both servants and mistresses in England. 
They have their public balls, and their invitations to the trades- 
men's balls. These they expect to attend just as much as they 
expect to have their daily food. At least twice in the winter is 
stipulated for. They have carriages sent to fetch them and bring 
them back, and go off as smart as their masters and mistresses 
would. The girls have their ball books, wherein to enter their 
engagements for the dance, just as well as any of their young 
ladies, and in short, for these evenings are as much ladies as 
the best of them. At the burgher balls, the maid-servants will 
often dance with some of the most respectable young tradesmen, 
and of course feel no little proud of it. An English housemaid 
whom wc brought to Germany with us being about to return again 
to England, wc were surprised to find that the nurse-maid li;ul 
made her a parting present of a ball-book, the said housemaid 
never having Learned a step in her life, and never being likely to 
require her ball-hook when in Englaud. 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 241 

The conduct of servants, as well as every thing else in Ger- 
many, is kept strictly under the surveillance of the police. Each 
servant is furnished with a character book, which contains all legal 
regulations respecting servants, and the engagements between 
them and their employers, being quite a little code of menial 
service. In this book, when a servant leaves his or her place, the 
master or mistress writes his or her character. This book is then 
laid up at the police-office, and before a servant can procure a fresh 
place this book must be fetched, and the character written in by 
the party whom the servant is leaving, and the book with all its 
characters must be taken to^ the party with whom the servant 
wishes to engage. Thus a powerful check is kept on the conduct 
of servants, and it is not easy for a bad one to get employ, or 
to avoid the sharp notice of the police officers. 

Amongst the domestic festivals, the chief besides those noticed, 
as Christmas-eve, New-year's eve, etc., are birth-days and Verlo- 
bungen, or betrothals. Betrothak in Germany are much more 
marked and ceremonious things than in England, and in former 
years were much more so. When money matters had to be 
settled, dowries, and so on, these were all settled at this time. 
Now, much of the formality is done away, and it is a pleasant 
family festival to which the friends are invited. Here the fact of 
the betrothal is announced by the father, rings are exchanged by 
the lovers, each containing the name of the party presenting it. 
The friends congratulate, and drink the health and prosperity of 
the betrothed. Betrothal cards are sent out to the whole circle 
of acquaintance, and in many places the betrothal is formally 
announced in the newspapers. We have before noticed the cere- 
monious distance at which the young of both sexes keep in public, 
not even walking arm-in-arm on any occasion. Now between the 
contracted parties this ceremony is abandoned. The youth visits 
the house like one of the family. He and his betrothed walk out 
everywhere arm-in-arm; and this is a certain mark of the betrothal. 
This betrothal often takes place when the parties have no imme- 
diate prospect of marriage, — when probably the youth has to seek 
his appointment from government, or his establishment in his 
profession or trade. Betrothals continue often for years, some- 
times for ten or more. In respect of early and long-standing 

R 



242 SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

engagements, the Germans much more resemble the Scotch than 
the English, as they do in many other particulars; in their houses, 
their open fields, and style of agriculture, their persevering, plod- 
ding characters, etc. The devotion of these betrothed parties 
to each other is often very marked, and to my taste a little 
too much so. In company they seem to meet, not for general 
society, but for themselves alone. They stand together, they sit 
together, they talk together, they often kiss and coo a little slily, 
not having heard the good old Scotch song — "Behave yoursel 
before folk/' They do not care, indeed, to go anywhere without 
the other; and the young lady, if invited to a party, generally 
takes care to ascertain if her lover is to be there too, or she will 
decline. I have often wished, that amongst all their social Vereine, 
or unions, they would establish a Verlobten Verein, or lovers' or 
betrotheds' union, where all the betrothed might meet and amuse 
each other, which would be by each pair sitting together and 
talking, and not encumber general society with their amorous 
abstraction. The conduct of the girls would often surprise our 
English damsels, who are taught to keep their loving and cooing 
at home, and to go out for the general amusement. One girl, the 
daughter of our landlady, used to amuse us by carrying this folly 
to the most extraordinary height. When invited to our parties, she 
would station herself in the room opposite to the door, and thereon 
fixing her eye in anticipation of the lover's arrival, you might 
speak to her a hundred times, but would obtain no other reply 
than— "Was?" "Wie?" or "0 ja!" or "0 nein!" Whether the 
beloved youth was absent or present, she had neither ears, eyes, 
nose, nor mouth for anybody, or anything else. If he were not 
present, and the company were requested to be seated, she reserved 
a chair for her swain, and warned every one away from it, even 
the master of the house. This must seem very extraordinary to 
English eyes, but used to attract very little notice here. 

Birth-days are joyful days. A party of friends is invited to 
celebrate the birth- clay. The dining-room is adorned with gar- 
lands, and a splendid garland, sometimes in the shape of a lyre, 
is hung at the head of the room. Presents are made to the person 
whose day it is. These are generally laid on the breakfast-table 
by the person's plate, and form an agreeable surprise on entering 



SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 243 

tin- room. Garlands of beautiful flowers, in spring, often wholly of 
violets and their green leaves, are sent in by friends. These gar- 
lands you will often see hanging in houses as grateful memorials 
of the affection of friends ; yes, even in palaces, as grateful 
memorials of the affection of the people. They who have visited 
the palace of San Souci, at Potsdam, will recollect seeing some 
very beautiful ones there, which had been sent in on the birth-days 
of the king and queen by the neighbouring people. Such things 
are tokens not only of the esteem in which the sovereigns are held, 
but also of the pleasure with which they are received, and cannot 
be looked on by the royal parties from time to time without pro- 
ducing the happiest tone of mind towards their subjects. Perhaps 
even a still more affecting tribute of this kind is yet to be seen in 
the house of an old schoolmaster near Hanau, where the walls are 
almost covered with the garlands which have been presented by 
his scholars through a course of no less than fifty years. On the 
supper table is sometimes found a cake in the centre, with as 
many wax-lights burning round it on the dish as are the years of 
the person celebrated. This has a very beautiful effect. At the 
dinner, or supper, which is more generally the meal, the health of 
the party is drank with clinking of glasses and much jubilance. 

But the general family festivals in Germany are the Silberne 
and Goldene Hochzeit, or silver and golden marriage; that is, the 
twenty-fifth and the fiftieth anniversary of married life. These 
are kept with great festivity, much in the manner of birth-days; 
and in the instances where the latter is arrived at, the whole circle 
of acquaintance is anxious to be there, as an occasion which, to the 
aged pair, can never possibly come again. It is a sort of antici- 
patory farewell. 

A pleasing feature in German social life is the language of 
flowers. This, which is quite extinct with us, is with them as real 
and poetical as in the East. They have written and printed this 
language, and it is carefully used or avoided in all presents of 
nosegays in the little bouquets presented in dancing cotillions, and 
it extends itself even to colours, some of which, to us lively and 
pleasing, are to them expressive of violent or hostile qualities. 
Red and yellow are expressive of pride and state. Thus the 
flowers and ribbons introduced into all their nosegays, and the 

r 2 



244< SOCIAL LIFE AND HABITS. 

bushes which they hang out on all occasions of festivity, days of 
national or other joy or triumph, have all their precise, and to 
them very significant, language, — as the tree adorned with flowers 
and ribbons, set up on the roof on the covering in of a new house; 
the garlands which they suspend on the little crosses on the graves, 
and the garlands of the bride, and the funeral. Garland-making 
is a distinct trade; and you see these expressive and poetical orna- 
ments borne through the streets, in all directions, by the makers, 
to the houses where they are ordered. By following one of these 
to the place of destination, you could, without asking a question, 
perfectly satisfy yourself that there a marriage, a birth-day, or a 
funeral, was about to be solemnized; and in the latter case, whether 
the deceased were a man, or woman, or child, whether married or 
not. All this is clearly indicated by the absence or presence of 
certain flowers, as white or red roses, lilies, and so on. The gar- 
land for an old married man is merely of uniform evergreen, gene- 
rally ivy. The funeral garlands are so large that they enclose a 
great portion of the surface of the shroud, which lies on the funeral 
car; and, so soon as the grave is filled in, are laid upon it in the 
same form. Here their social, as well as all other life, making its 
earthly termination, naturally terminates also our chapter. 




©HA IP Til ft 2^000, 



CH \RACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY, IN A 
TOUR THROUGH VARIOUS PARTS OF THE COUNTRY. 



1. HEIDELBERG TO CARLSRUHE. 

There is perhaps no mode in which so lively a sketch of the 
characteristics of the cities and scenery of a country can be given 
as in that of a tour; and we will, therefore, at once adopt this 
form for conveying the remarks which we have to make on this 
subject. 

It was in the beginning of August that we started from Heidel- 
berg, on a three months' ramble, amongst the capitals of Germany 
and the intervening scenes. The weather was and had been wet 
and cheerless, and everybody predicted its continuance; but, spite 
of this wc set out with spirits filled so thoroughly with the antici- 



246 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

pation of new experiences, that nothing could daunt us, and our 
resolution was repayed by three months of the most glorious 
weather that ever was enjoyed. 

We had determined, that we might be at liberty to proceed or 
stop, to go right or left, faster or slower, at our pleasure, and thus 
have it in our power to examine, at our leisure, whatever we wished, 
to travel chiefly by the hired carriages of the country, to be found 
in plenty in every town, and to stretch across any wide and un- 
interesting track in the eilwagen or the steam train. We therefore 
engaged a Heidelberg Lohn-kutcher as far as Baden-Baden. Our 
carriage was truly none of the handsomest, nor our horses of the 
best; but our kutcher, who appeared a good-natured fellow, assured 
us that he was only the man and not the master; that the master 
was at Carlsruhe, and there we should be provided with a splendid 
carriage, splendid horses, and all those splendid things which are 
so* readily promised and so seldom performed. We knew, how- 
ever, enough of the race of Lohn-kutcher to make all sure by an 
agreement, and we jolted away over the stones of Heidelberg in 
the best possible humour. Scarcely were we out of the city when 
a very characteristic and agreeable surprise awaited us. It is the 
pleasant custom of the German students, when one of them leaves 
the University, to accompany him a stage or so, in carriages, on 
his way. If he go to enter on his office, and it be at no great 
distance, they accompany him to the place of his future abode. This 
was just now the case with a very worthy young friend of ours, who 
was proceeding to Bruchsal, the next town, to enter on his appoint- 
ment under government; and thus, actually rolling out of the city 
gate before us was the train of our young friend and his intimate 
associates. There he sat, in his Philister-wagcn, as it is called 
on these occasions; that is, the carriage which bears him from 
the Burschen-heaven into Philistia, or land of the Philistines, of 
whom he is about to become one. There he sat, in his Philistcr- 
wagen, at the head of the train, with another good friend of ours 
at his side, and three or four carriages following, filled with his 
associates. It was to us a very agreeable incident, which enabled 
us to fall into the train, and thus pay him, who had been the 
companion of so many of our pleasant hours in this place, the 
compliment of swelling his departing train. We saw him set 



GERMAN CITIES \M> SCENERY. 247 

down at his place of future destination, his destination at least for 
a time; and after taking a parting glass of wine with him and his 
young friends at the inn, again drove on our way. 

When we looked back to the cheerful and socially intellectual 
life which this young man had been accustomed to in Heidelberg, 
and then regarded the little dull town of Bruchsal, where a few 
officers of finance and the army make the most cultivated portion 
of the society, we could not help feeling what a fall from the 
Burschen-heaven the greater part of the young German students 
are destined to experience; to what obscure and uninteresting spots 
they are often, as it were, banished for life; we could not help 
more than ever sympathizing with them in the fondness with which 
they cling to the enjoyment and the memory of their student life. 

A few hours' drive through a pleasant country saw us in 
Carlsruhe, the capital of the little state of Baden. Who would 
believe himself in a capital? Its name is Charleses-rest, and truly 
a place of rest it appears. A modern town, as usual, all of white 
houses, with wide streets, and truly very few people in them. 
Many of the buildings are handsome. There are good inns; and 
at the termination of every street you see the distant palace rearing 
its domes and towers in silent and solitary grandeur. It seems as 
if the palace was never to be out of sight, lest one should forget 
that it was there, and forget, at the same time, that we were in a 
capital. There is everywhere a feeling of silence and loneliness; 
of a want of life and action, that ma.kes you long to be gone, and 
that with a feeling of pity for those who must pass their dreamy 
life there. An officer, a few handsomely dressed ladies, now and 
then break up the brooding monotony; or the sound of a trumpet 
and the parade of a body of soldiers give a passing gleam of relief. 
We wandered through the streets, finding that one part of the city 
was only pretty much like another, and that all terminated in con- 
verging lines at the palace. Before the palace lies a large square 
surrounded by low houses, but which is very pleasantly planted with 
avenues of trees, and having in the centre a fountain with a group 
of figures, a large circular basin of water with swans, and orange 
trees set out in long avenues as approaches to the central fountain, 
which diffuse a delightful odour, as well as an air of summer beauty 
round them. 



248 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Behind the palace lie again extensive gardens — to which, as 
everywhere in Germany, you have free access — with broad and 
extensive woodland walks. But here again all was still, and as it 
were dead — a sort of life in death. The only living things there 
were a soldier, a gardener, and a swan, and they looked very like 
sleep-walkers. 

Were these gardens in the suburbs of a busy city, how charm- 
ing would they be; but solitude to solitude, that is a little too 
much. The gardens are bounded on the other side by a vast and 
dense old forest of oak — the Hardt, with radiating ridings through 
it, diverging in the same manner from the palace as the opposite 
streets of the city. The very intensity of the solitude of this 
forest made us anxious to plunge into it, like that feeling that 
seizes us on high towers with a desire to plunge down below. It 
was gloomy, brooding, and immense. The glimpses through its 
different ridings, terminating in the dim distance of the far-off 
country, gave one an idea of vastness and loneliness, and the 
"brown horror" of shades, in which we might wander for days 
without seeing a human being, that had a touch of sublimity in it, 
spite of the perfect level of the whole of this neighbourhood. No 
doubt, too, the charm was heightened by the very same circum- 
stance which made the grapes sour to the fox and the apple sweet 
to Eve; for while the gardener assured us that there were hundreds 
of wild swine ranging in this gloomy old Hardt, which we had a 
particular desire to see, he informed us also that nobody was allowed 
to enter it. 

Carlsruhe, like several other of the German capitals, makes us 
wonder why it came there. With so many glorious situations in 
this beautiful little state, especially on the Neckar or the Rhine, 
or in the vicinity of the Black Forest, for a capital, here is this 
dreamy place clapped down on a dead flat, and that chiefly in the 
present century, when we should have imagined people alive to all 
the necessary considerations of this kind. But Carlsruhe, like 
many greater things in this world, was an accident. The ancient 
forest of Hardt, which once extended over a great portion of the 
palatinate, and of which the woods still stretch themselves from 
Heidelberg hither, in the last century was here the thickest and 
most solitary. Here abounded the most famous old boars and great 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 249 

deer; and the Markgraf Karl, who delighted in the chase, used t<> 
frequent this neighbourhood with particular pleasure. He built 
himself a simple hunting-house here, and with very few attend- 
ants retired hither often, for sport and peace from political anxieties. 
He called it his Rest. Like the rest of rulers in general, it was 
speedily invaded; the hut grew into a village, the village into a 
city, and now, in one of the central squares of the city, stands a 
heavy pyramid, with an inscription informing you that here stood 
the original hut, here now sleeps its inhabitant, and that this was 
and is the actual Karlsruhe, i.e. Karl's Rest. To us, one of the 
most interesting spots in the whole city was the Fried-Hof, or 
Cemetery, in which lies Johan Heinrich Stilling, whose life has 
been read with so much interest in England. 

The cemetery is one of those large ones laid out in walks and 
planted, so common in Germany, and now becoming desirably more 
common in England. Amid many magnificent and stately tombs 
of nobles and officers of state, you find near the little chapel or 
oratory a rude cross, its feet supported by some rudely piled-up 
stones. This is the grave of Stilling, and very fitly accords with 
the simple character of his life. By his talents, and not less by 
his professed reliance on Providence, the great feature of his mind, 
he raised himself from the rank of a tailor's son to be the associate 
of princes. He became a popular Professor of state and political 
economy in several of the universities of his country; and rendered 
signal benefit to vast numbers of his fellow- creatures, not only by 
the diffusion of knowledge in his professional career, but by the 
restoration of many to sight by successful operation for cataract. 
Still more, perhaps, was the benefit which he rendered in Germany 
by his firm faith in a fatherly Providence. His whole history is 
one of those singular series of justifications of the wonderful divine 
reliance which he maintained and taught, which afford tough matter 
of digestion to the sceptical, and are by no means removed by any 
cavillings at the imperfections of the man — for who is perfect ?• — ■ 
or by the application of the terms mystic and visionary. Direct 
help in the time of need came so continually according to his fast 
belief — not mystical, but material help; not visionary, but palpable 
— that if it cannot in some minds establish a thorough conviction 
of the doctrine that God is a sure helper in the time of need to 



250 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

those who put their trust in him, yet it demonstrates at least the 
existence of a chance still more marvellous and inexplicable. 

The story of the early life of Jung Stilling, in particular, is one 
of the most beautiful insights given us into the heart and domestic 
existence of the village inhabitants of Germany. Through his 
singular career, amongst the titled and the learned, Goethe, Wie- 
land, Schiller, Herder, Voss, and other illustrious writers, and 
being an especial friend and favourite of his prince, his simple and 
unaffected, though not uncalculating character, continued to dis- 
tinguish him from those around him; and just so now is he marked 
out by his grave. On a stone at the foot is this inscription: — 
" Hier ruht Johan Heinrich Jung, genannt Stilling. Geb. D 12 
S.P.T. 1740, G.S.T. D 2 A.P. 1817. Herr du weist dass ich dich 
leeb habe. Evg. Joh. 21 K. 15 v." — Here rests Johan Heinrich, 
called Stilling. Born the 12th of September 1740, died the 2d of 
April 1817. Lord thou knowest that I love thee. John xxi. 15. 
On another stone: "Hier ruht Elizabetha Jung, geborene Cbnig. 
Geb. D 9 April 1756, Gest. D 22 April 1817. Jenseits ist wieder- 
sehen und Vergeltung." — Here lies Elizabeth Jung, born Conig. 
Born the 9th of April 1756, died the 22d of April 1817. Above 
is reunion and reward. 

We could not tread the silent streets of Carlsruhe without a 
lively feeling for the number of students who come there to take 
their states' examination; that is, all those who have passed their 
examination at their college, and have still to pass the more severe 
one before the officers appointed by the state, without which they 
can neither practise as physicians, lawyers, nor hold a post in 
church or state. We had heard so much of the terrors of this 
trial; of young men coming and staying awhile, and then, before 
the day arrived, jumping into the eilwagen and going off home; of 
those who have clone this several times, before they could bring their 
courage to the sticking-place; of the anxious and palpitating wait- 
ing here from day to day for its coming on; and of the agonies of 
shame and mortification of those who, according to the phrase, fall 
through, — that we saw in every silent group in the street, or anxious 
young face in the inn, a student on the rack of anticipation. The 
people at the inns know these youths as well as they do blacklegs. 
The pale check, the anxious eye, the want of appetite, the restless 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 251 

going to and fro, the clinging to the consolatory pipe and to the 
cheering glass, arc the indications of this unenviable state of pro- 
bation. The greater part, however, get into private lodgings, 
where both their persons and purses can hide their emptiness of 
comfort. 

2. JOURNEY TO BADEN-BADEN. LA FAVORITE. 

On issuing out in the morning to pursue our journey, our 
kutcher made his bow and introduced us to his Herr. The man 
had driven us exceedingly well; his carriage, if not superb, was 
exceedingly comfortable; his horses, though lean, were tough and 
untireable; and for himself, a more accommodating soul could not 
exist. We had, therefore, no desire to change him, and had 
forgotten all thought of it; but here stood what he called his Herr, 
a thick, bluff, gruff-looking fellow in a blue frock, for all the world 
the picture of an English boatman. The carriage was handsome, the 
horses famous — but, the man ! No — the exchange in that particular 
was not to be thought of. We declared that we were quite satisfied, 
that we had no wish to change; but the change was already made. 
Our luggage was packed; the carriage was so much better, the 
horses so much better. Then we would have the carriage and the 
horses, but we would have also our old man. No, the man was 
but the man; the Herr would have the honour of driving us; in 
fact it was one of those many cases in which in Germany you are 
handed from one Lohn-kutcher to another in this way. The Herr 
was no more our old kutcher's master than he was ours, but they 
were two who play into each other's hands. The one brought 
parties from Heidelberg to Carlsruhe, and the other from Baden to 
Carlsruhe, and vice versa. Thus both kutchers were always employed, 
and always near home. We got in, by no means pleased with the 
exchange, our new kutcher looking bluffer for the compliment we 
had paid him in not wishing him at all. 

A short day's journey over open plains, brought us to Baden- 
Baden. As we approached, the hills on our left reared themselves 
higher and higher, became wilder and woodier, and two towers 
overlooking an opening into those hills, told us without any 
inquiry that there lay this celebrated watering-place. There was a 
charm about the mountain-land before us that excited a strong 



£52 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

desire to enter it; but before we did this, we had a treat of another 
sort. This was a visit to the old palace of La Favorite. This 
curious old place lies about six miles from Baden, and is a spot to 
which pleasant excursions are made almost every day in summer. 
It lies on the level of the plain; in fact, low. You behold before 
you, as you proceed, a mass of finely-grown wood; trees, whose 
lofty piles of richest foliage denote a mature growth in a deep soil, 
and fill the mind with sensations of sylvan majesty and richness. 
As you enter this mass of wood, you find it consist of splendid 
avenues of lime and sycamore, with intervening plots of richest 
meadow full of deep grass, and thick shade of wood and copse 
here and there, with various kinds of trees, pine and oak, hung with 
festooning ivy. You find a neat inn, with its garden and gay 
flowers, and the keeper's daughter will go with you and shew you 
the house. This lies still lower down. It is flanked and surrounded 
by these noble avenues, and as you approach it presents a quaint 
and decaying, though not very antique ah-, being built only in the 
last century. On the left hand as you approach it, a long colonnade 
adjoins the avenue, and on the opposite side is a range of offices 
corresponding. The place was built by the famous Sybilla, wife of 
the Marquis of Baden, the friend and fellow champion of Prince 
Eugene against the Turks. She was equally remarkable for her 
beauty and her love of building. The great palace of Rastadt, 
which we had passed on our way, was also erected by her; but this 
seems to have been indeed her Favorite. It is more like an old 
house in a romance than one in real life; and its present desertion, 
and some traces of decay, only give it a more lively touch of 
interest. 

In the centre of the house is a large hall, round which the 
rooms range. This hall has open corridors, with heavy balustrades 
of red porphyry. The walls are lined with fine porcelain tiles, and 
the floors are inlaid with different coloured marbles. Every room 
has its own peculiar character, somewhat fantastic, but nevertheless 
very rich, curious, and piquant. The furniture is composed of 
fancy chairs, with rich gilding and different coloured satin and 
velvet cushions, curious old cabinets, splendid pieces of china, and 
most beautiful mosaic work. The walls are richly inlaid with 
flowers and birds, and different figures and scenes, many of them 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 253 

of singular grace and beauty. There are everywhere immense 
mirrors; looking-glass covers whole walls in curious patterns and 
departments ; and not only these, but the portraits of Sybilla 
herself, in all sorts of costumes; in masking dresses, and of every 
age, amounting to upwards of sixty, are convincing proofs of the 
good lady's pride in her beauty, which, in fact, was great. She 
was tall, majestic, and of a noble countenance. There are numbers 
of noble china jars, brought by the good Margraf Wilhelm, out of 
Turkey; and on the wall of one apartment are miniature portraits 
of all the poets of Germany up to that period, set in the gilt 
mouldings of the looking-glass which covers it. In the corners of 
these rooms are huge projecting fireplaces, the front of the chimney 
running up in a retreating pyramidal style, covered with porcelain 
tiles, and ornamented with all sorts of figures standing upon them. 
The kitchens are not the less curious. These are full of schranks 
or cupboards, filled with old glass and china. Here you see the 
tall humpers or beakers, each holding a quart or more, out of which 
the Barons drank at the Margraf 's feasts, and each having the 
arms and name of the particular baron engraved on it; the humper 
of the Margraf himself being proportionably large and splendid. 
Here too you have a curious old china dinner-service. Many of 
the dishes, with their covers, being in the form and painted exactly 
to resemble the particular bird or beast which was served up 
in them. Accordingly you have turkeys, peacocks, fish, a boar's 
head, ducks, partridges, pheasants, and a variety of others. There 
is a large figure of a Chinese mandarin seated on the dresser, 
whose hands and feet, when laid hold of, come out, as drawers, 
the whole figure, in fact, constituting a spice cupboard. Similar 
things the visitors to the Japanese palace at Dresden have seen, 
but here they do not make a part of a mere collection of china ; 
they make, on the contrary, a characteristic part of the furnishing 
of a singular house, and are regarded with a different feeling. 
You behold also in the kitchen a huge black board, down one edge 
of which is painted a catalogue of all good things of life, so that 
the cook by a mark with his chalk opposite to any of these names, 
indicated to the first glance of the good lady of the house the 
contents of the larder for the time, and became his own guide in 
purveying and cooking. 



254 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

The little rustic chapel, called SybihVs chapel, is at a good 
distance from the house, in fact, in the wood on the upper side of 
the road from Rastadt to Baden. Here she is said, in her latter 
years, to have inflicted on herself long and severe penance ; and a 
piece of a hair shirt, an iron cross of links with spikes, a scourge, 
and other articles of self-torture, are shewn, said to be those which 
she used. The chapel has, indeed, all the trumpery appendages 
of the old Catholic places. Crucifixes, a deathly figure lying in 
a cell to represent the body of the Saviour in the tomb ; an altar, 
confessional, some wretched religious paintings, and two wooden 
figures of the Virgin and St. John, said by some traveller to have 
been the guests with which Sybilla used to sit here at her meals, 
equal portions being served to all three, but their share being 
afterwards given to the poor. Our guide knew nothing of this 
story, which may have originated in St. John holding a plate in 
his hand, for the receipt of any alms that religious votaries might 
put in. The chapel, in fact, has occasional mass performed in it, 
and is resorted to with much devotion by the Catholic peasantry. 

BADEN-BADEN. 

What a little world of human folly is a watering-place ! what 
a contrast to all other German life is a German watering-place. 
Everything, everywhere else in Germany, has an air of decorum and 
moral sobriety. All is orderly, rational, domestic, and quiet; but 
the German bathing-places, on the contrary, are the very concen- 
trations of vice and vanity. The German Spas are both natural 
and moral phenomena. They seem to be vents by which, at once, 
the earth relieves itself of its superfluous internal heat and mineral 
tinctures, and the people of their otherwise pent-up passions. 
Amid the solemn beauties of nature, what a bubbling up of mortal 
folly and deformity is here ! and the chief root of all this is the 
detestable vice of gaming, a vice here licensed and sanctioned by 
the government. 

What a delightful place would this little Baden-Baden be, 
were but this moral leprosy, this horridest disease of social life, 
but cured instead of being aggravated here. How sweetly stretches 
itself the little town along its lovely valley. How beautifully rise 
around in the sunshine the pine-clad lulls. How clean, how bright, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. ZOO 

how substantial is everything in the little city. How many plea- 
sures of solitude and society, of mirth and quiet, of youthful glad- 
ness and the cheerfulness of more sober years, are gathered into 
and around it; but in the midst of all, lies coiled up ready for its 
prey, the deadly serpent, the horrible spirit of gambling, and blasts 
with its breath everything around it. The nuisance here is so 
staring, so undisguised, so thrust on you and your observation, 
that it is made tenfold hateful. In large cities vice reigns in lordly 
style, and you know that it cannot well be repressed; but still, it 
is diffused amid a huge population, and it is to a degree diluted 
and lost to notice. Each fashionable or unfashionable crime with- 
draws itself to its peculiar haunt, the open streets and the open 
day are surrendered to the busy passage of business and pleasure- 
seeking crowds. You know, indeed, that crime in a thousand 
shapes exists around you, but you are not bearded by it. You can 
avoid it, and its votaries and victims, and in the midst of purer 
classes, even forget it. But here it is thrust upon you. There is 
not a population large enough to conceal it. It meets you at every 
turn, in the black-legs which from every country it brings hither. 
France, England, Russia, Italy, Germany, all have their representa- 
tives in the shape of gamblers and swindlers here. You see the 
worst and most disgusting classes of men around you, drawn out 
of the vast mass of corrupt capitals by the infernal loadstone of 
gambling. You feel that you are surrounded by them ; you hear 
their spirit in the conversation that goes on around you. The very 
walks that you tread, and the halls that you enter, are supported by 
the gains of legalized tempters. Eolly and vanity in plenty you 
expect in such places amid the health and pleasure seekers; but 
this monstrous evil, thus concentrated, as it were, into a small 
and virulent focus, taints everything, and creates in you an inex- 
pressible feeling of melancholy and loathing. How charming 
were Baden-Baden were this monster away! and how wise and. 
truly German are those states which, like Wiirtemberg, refuse to 
allow it in their spas. To convert the sweetest spots of physical 
healing into dens of moral contagion, is in every sense an act of 
moral suicide unworthy of the people of Germany. 

Baden-Baden, except that it lies lower, reminds one much of 
Richmond in its location. It runs along the side of the hill much 



256 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

iii the same way. The ascent of its main street is very similar. 
It abounds in capital hotels, large and excellent, and for so 
fashionable a place, is not dear. Our quarters were at the Baden- 
scher Hof, where about two hundred people sate down daily to the 
excellent table d'hote ; a good band playing in the orchestra during 
the dinner. This inn occupies the site of a former monastery; 
and the landlord has lately built a small chapel in the garden in 
place of one which has been removed in the course of his improve- 
ments. It was not quite completed when we were there ; and the 
old images of saints and virgins looked very disconsolate as they 
lay about the garden aw T aiting their new apotheosis. 

After dinner, following the course of the little river Oesbach 
down the valley, and crossing a bridge, we soon found ourselves at 
the Conversation House, the centre of gaiety in Baden. It is a 
splendid building, with a fine colonnade in front, and before it a 
broad parade-ground. The scene here was very animated. Crowds 
of people of almost all nations were walking to and fro. French 
was heard on all sides; and the people, in richest dresses, looking 
like so many figures just stepped out of a magazine of fashions. 
In the colonnade, numbers were seated to enjoy the prospect, the 
gay scene, and the shade, on chairs which were let by the hour. 
Others giving their hats and sticks, great coats or umbrellas, to 
persons who make it their business to keep them for them, were 
entering the saloon. Others were passing in and out of the cas- 
sino and confectioners hard by ; and others were taking tickets at 
the theatre, also close at hand. An orchestra like an open temple, 
at some little distance in front, was filled with a band in full play; 
and in curious contrast, on the green on which it stood, a troop of 
haymakers in their rustic dress were as busily plying their rakes 
and forks. To the right, and extending at right angles with the 
parade, stretched a double line of booths towards the city — in fact 
a bazaar, filled with all sorts of such things as are commonly to be 
found there; lace collars and ribbons, and other ladies' articles, 
trinkets, jewels, walking-sticks, and in short, all sorts of expensive 
knick-nacks, recommended by Jewesses, Tyrolese and French dealers. 

The whole scene was one of singular splendour and gaiety ; a 
busy ant-hill of fashion, lying thus singularly in the quiet heart of 
nature, with walks winding away on all sides, — some shady, more 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 257 

open, some leading along the river side, others up the hills, on 
which, here and there, you discerned in every direction gay parties, 
and whence you heard laughter and merry voices. Full opposite 
lay the cheerful-looking town; part extending along the hill side, 
and part in quaint and picturesque style running up it; with the 
ducal castle soaring above all the other buildings; and hills and 
forests still farther away, and soaring above it; with the ruins of 
the yet older castle peeping out of the rocky woods on the distant 
heights. 

Enter the Conversation House. There all is equally splendid 
and lively. The entrance, or conversation saloon, is large and 
elegantly fitted up. There are crowds of well-dressed people 
walking to and fro ; others in groups, occupying the seats which 
run round by the walls. On the left you observe an eager group 
all inclining their heads towards a table. That is a gaming- 
table. There you hear the everlasting chink of money. There sit 
the easy and unconcerned-looking possessors of the table, rake in 
hand; heaps of gold, and roulettes of more lying before them. 
You hear the continual utterance of the short and mysterious 
sounds which mark the progress of the play, and see them, now 
push a few coins towards some lucky winner, now rake up sweep- 
ing heaps towards their own golden mountain. 

There are three or four other rooms, in which rouge et noir, 
roulette, and other gambling, are going on. The ball-room is even 
occupied by such tables when not wanted for its more ostensible 
objects; and there are more private rooms, where you may get 
a glimpse of equally absorbed players engaged in games of cards. 

The fitting up of the ball-room and of a re-union room at the 
right hand end are remarkably splendid. The walls of the ball- 
room are adorned with wreaths and garlands, and borderings of 
flowers, in the most elegant patterns and beautiful colours ; and 
when you examine these flowers, you find they are not real ones 
thus disposed for a particular occasion, but artificial ones of the 
best quality, constituting the permanent embellishment of the place. 
The re-union room is very richly furnished; and its furniture 
possesses a particular interest, having belonged to the Empress 
Josephine. 

For those who wish to study human nature in its varieties and 

s 



£58 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

its passions, this scene is a fine one. The crowds of gay people 

going in and out; the groups in conversation, or watching the 

rest; the attention aroused by rank and beauty; the various 

flirtations already in embryo, or in obvious progress; the mixture 

of princes, nobles, ladies fair and young, old and ugly, and still 

vain; Jews, Gentiles, gamblers, swindlers, blacklegs, creatures of 

prey and their unconscious victims; old worn-out roues, with 

sallow faces and long lanky limbs, clad in cloth of the best cut ; 

old jolly companions, with red faces, white hair, gouty feet, fine 

gloves and handsome canes; Russians, Poles, French, English, 

Germans, with enormous moustachios, or without them: the fire 

of Mammon always burning on his altars, and the doomed flies 

buzzing eternally about them, and some already with scorched-off 

wings. A scene of external gaiety with all that is internally hollow, 

and rotten, and deceitful. To the reflective mind, this feeling 

poisons all that otherwise were attractive in the show. Like the 

rest, one cannot help turning one's steps, from day to day, towards 

this temple of folly and frivolity, of speculation and madness. 

There are still the gay and buzzing crowds. There are still heard 

at the table the short French words; the clink of gold; and there 

to be seen the eager looks of those who are winning or losing it. 

To watch the first casual glance of a new comer ; to see how by 

degrees his careless air becomes fixed ; the gaze darkens ; the eye 

sharpens ; the whole man becomes engrossed with the view. To 

see him make his first hesitating deposit, by degrees go deeper 

and deeper, and then plunge in heart and life and soul, borne on 

to conquest or ruin by the great torrent of excitement. To see, 

here and there, one having won something, draw off, rejoice in his 

luck, hover undecided whether to go quite away or return. Here, 

one yield to" the potent fascination, and reseat himself; here, one 

grasped by the firm fingers of a friend, suffer himself to be led 

away while all is well. To see a timid and amiable-looking woman 

stand behind, hiddenly draw forth her purse as she watches the 

progress of the play, hand the stake to the gentleman of her party 

who stands before her, till, fired by the alternations of loss and 

gain, she pushes by degrees to the front, takes a seat, and from 

that moment becomes a prey to the worst writhings and spurrings 

of the human soul. To watch the dark eye, the pale cheek, the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 259 

firm-set lips and teeth, the trembling, but clenched hand of the 
desperate player for life and death, as he sits opposite to the com- 
fortable and very portly person of some secure and far more indif- 
ferent adventurer, or some dowager-looking lady, pricking down 
on her card very composedly the moves, and having no feeling for 
all that goes on around, feeling indeed only occasionally her purse, 
which lies beside her, and the pile of gold pieces, which she now 
and then lifts, and sets down again calculatingly. 

These are the sights that you continually witness ; and from 
day to day still find many of the same figures occupying the same 
places at these tables. The sturdy and white head of the Elector 
of Hesse Cassel, who annually spends much time, and it is said 
about 4000^. sterling, at these and other tables, was not then 
visible; nor those of the expert Russians, who in the former 
summer had broke the bank twice, and carried off with them 
several thousand pounds; but there were, to say nothing of the 
gentlemen, three ladies who daily attracted much attention. One 
was an actress of some eminence, whom I had before met on the 
Rhine, and whose amiable expression of countenance and happy 
spirit had very much charmed me. Here she was, but apparently 
not the same person. While engaged in play, the selfish greedi- 
ness which devoured her, darkened and deformed her in a won- 
derful manner. The sunny smile, the cordial and friendly 
temperament, and the open, quiet beaming of the blue eye and 
pleasant face, had now given way to an expression dark and wolfish . 

Another was a little Italian, who seemed to play with a very 
steady and calculating air, but so far as I could discern with very 
little gain or loss. The third was a full-formed lady of, perhaps, 
fifty-five, who came every evening, seated herself in very business- 
like style; took off her shawl, drew off her gloves, discovering 
hands well garnished with jewelled rings; took out her purse, and 
laid it, with her pocket handkerchief, before her on the table; took 
out a certain quantity of gold, and counting it, set it up in a pile 
as a certain monument to victory; refreshed herself with a few 
sniffs from her scent-bottle, and then steadily surveying the table, 
as if to say — "Now, what goes on?" put down her stake, and 
then for the whole evening sate steadily reaping no inconsiderable 
harvest. 

s 2 



260 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Revolting as this view of human nature is, it is difficult to 
avoid, day after day, being drawn to its contemplation, I suppose 
pretty much under the same fascination that people are drawn to 
witness an execution, though they shriek or groan when they are 
there. Let us now away from this scene of heartless speculation 
and victimized misery. We will not even stay to enter the re-union 
saloon, where the select party of subscribers meet for conversation 
or private concerts, nor into any other part of this temple of folly, 
which, as well as the pleasure-grounds around, are all built or 
maintained out of the profits of gaming. Rather let us up into 
the hills and the woods. 

We observed that a magnificent new pump-room was building 
close by the stream. We walked along the banks of this rivulet, 
down the delightful valley of Lichtenthal, beneath its fine avenue 
of trees, a couple of miles in length. In our walks through the 
town, the number of shops with French signs, shops of fashionable 
milliners, hairdressers, jewellers, and such like; the number of 
notices in French and English of lodgings to let; the number of 
servants about the streets in livery; of equipages, and of English, 
did not suffer us for a moment to forget that we were in one of 
the most fashionable watering-places of Germany. In the inns, 
all the waiters spoke French or English. They seemed to have a 
contempt for you if you addressed them in German. One heard 
so much of every language but German, that one seemed to long 
again for its homely, hearty sound. 

In our way up the hills we visited the castle. It is a large 
building having more the air of an old manor-house than of a 
ducal castle. The Grand Duchess is said to be fond of it, and 
often to come hither in summer, while the Duke has a greater 
liking for his castle of Eberstein in the Mur<r Thai. The dungeons 
of this castle are the great attraction to travellers, and have been 
so often described with great gusto, that we may be excused from 
doing it again. They present revolting evidences of the dark 
cruelties perpetrated in these underground prisons in past ages. 
The castle is built on the foundations of one still older, and you 
are conducted through the remains of a Roman bath to these 
horrible vaults. The passages are secured with stone doors of a 
foot or so in thickness, ami weighing from one to two hundred 



GERMAN CITIES AM) SCENERY. 



261 



weight, which still remain, and as they turn on their hinges make 
a deep and moaning sort of music. The iron doors which used 
to be again within these, with their bars and bolts, have also left 
vestiges. There is the pit descending down through the whole 
castle, from the top to these vaults, down which the prisoners were 
let with a rope and pulley. The traces of the sloping passage from 
the castle, along which the lord used to enter, and where tradition 
says that the notorious Ulric of Wiirtemberg once accompanied 
him to this horrid tribunal, are yet visible. There is the recess in 
the wall where the figure of the Virgin stood, which the unhappy 
victim was ordered to advance and kiss, when a trap-door opened 
and sent him down into a tremendous pit filled with wheels armed 
with knives, which revolving in all directions tore him to pieces. 
You now walk over this pit on planks with which it is concealed. 

We issued from the dismal, but still wonderfully dry dungeons, 
with pleasure, to the daylight, and found our way through the 




pleasant gardens, up towards the older castle 

eyes aloft in its wood at about two miles distance 

way, a great part of it through fine woods, leads you with ease 



This caught our 
A winding 



262 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

thither, especially as you have seats here and there by the way- 
sides. At the ruins you find a rustic inn, where wine and refresh- 
ments may be had. You ascend the lofty ruins by broken steps, 
and stand on crumbling towers, protected by handrails ; and gaze 
over one of the finest and most extensive landscapes imaginable. 
The town far below you ; the conical hills rising round it, crowned 
with their pine woods; the vast plain with smoking villages; the 
dark hills of the Black Forest in one direction, those of the Oden- 
wald in another, and the Vogesen on the French frontiers on a 
third. 

At every hour of the day parties on foot or in carriages are 
ascending to this airy height, and we found an English family 
there who amused us exceedingly by their adventures. These 
good people, who had evidently been fortunate in the world, and 
had made their way bravely through it, without original education, 
had been inspired with the very rational desire to see more of the 
world than is cooped within the four seas. They had travelled in 
France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and elsewhere; and were as 
merry as anybody could be at the accidents which befell them 
through their ignorance of the languages and customs of these 
countries. Every summer, father, mother, and two or three chil- 
dren of ten or twelve years old, made a trip. The summer before 
they were in Austria, but they did not like it. To say nothing of 
the botheration of dining by the cart, where they had to pick the 
names of the dishes out of a lingo worse than Greek, they had got 
into a hell-wagon to go to Vienna, and a hell it was. They were 
shook into a jelly, and tumbled about for days and nights like cogs 
in a mill wheel; and when they got to Vienna, they found that 
their luggage had not been allowed to go with them, but had been 
sent by & fore-wagon (Fuhr-wagen), which instead of going before, 
was so far behind that they had to lie in bed for a week for want 
of their clothes. The really good-natured people were, however, 
not a whit daunted. They were on their way to the Tyrol, and 
said while they had health and strength they meant every summer 
to make a trip somewhere. 

The walks through these lofty woods are fine and solitary. One 
conducts you to a rustic bridge, which leads you out upon an 
isolated rock of vast height above the valley. But, in fact, the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 263 

whole country round Baden-Baden is full of delicious walks and 
rides. In the very outskirts of this little Babel of Fashion you 
find villages of the most old-fashioned description buried in their 
orchards, and exhibiting the aspect and manners of far past ages. 
But one thing to us was very striking. The surliness and incom- 
municativeness of the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood. 
This, so different to the general character of the German bauers, 
however, required no explanation. It is the result of the haughty 
and insolent treatment which they have received from the crowds 
of empty, corrupt, and purse-proud upstarts, which come in flocks 
round such a place. 

3. JOURNEY BY WILDBAD TO STUTTGARD. 

Our journey from Baden-Baden by Wildbad to Stuttgard, in 
finest summer weather, was most charming. The way was for 
the greater part of the distance to Wildbad, through the Black 
Forest. Besides a very Swiss character, which we immediately 
discerned in the houses with their outside galleries and projecting 
roofs, and the church towers with their domes and short spires 
covered with bright zink or with coloured and burnished tiles, the 
novelty of this peculiar forest scenery was in itself a great delight. 
We were now surrounded by those dark woods of which we had 
heard so much, and whose noble timber we had seen so often 
floating down the Neckar and the Rhine. Here now lay around us 
in profoundest stillness these forest tracts. Here reared aloft on 
the hills, or came shooting up from the deep glens below us, those 
magnificent trees which we had so long desired to see. We were 
surprised to find that these were not, as we had imagined, like our 
Scotch, fir, but all of the silver fir (Pinus Pinacea), a tree which 
when it grows alone stands aloft, gradually contracting its dimen- 
sions, like a tall Chinese pagoda, and hung with its large cones, as 
that is with its bells. In these mountain woods it is somewhat 
different, but not the less striking. Its clear and regular stems, 
rise in perfect cylinders to the height often of two hundred feet, 
and generally of more than one; hence an air of vigour and youth- 
ful majesty about them which is very beautiful. These stems of 
a leaden or silvery colour, whence the name, are so perfectly round, 
so clear, and rise so high without any sensible diminution of their 



264 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

size, that they look rather like gigantic cylinders planted in the 
earth, than ordinary trees which have gradually grown there. They 
give you a continual feeling of strength, youth, freshness, and life 
that is most agreeable, and keep your attention riveted on them, 
comparing one with another as you pass. They spring from the 
deepest glens, and still stretch their fine columns above you, and 
rear themselves in rivalry of the highest rocks. None are old, or 
allowed to attain that enormous bulk and picturesque ruggedness 
and decay which we had looked for, because they are all cut in 
their prime or before it for commerce; but they are an endless series 
of young and mighty and everspringing giants, that are glorious 
in their youth, and their boundless profusion. 

Through miles and miles of these fine woods lay our way; now 
down in the deepest and darkest depths of them, now passing along 
their highest ridges, and now advancing along broad level tracts, 
where on each hand ranged the countless and noble pillars of their 
stems, ever and anon calling forth exclamations of surprise at the 
size and loftiness of individuals, while the silence and the basking 
sunshine on the road, and the occasional change to some sweet, 
green valley, or village lying in the heart of the forest, had a very 
poetical feeling in them. 

At the end of a tolerable stage we emerged from the wood, and 
found ourselves at once before the ducal castle of Eberstein, and 
overlooking the beautiful Murg Thai. The valley of the Murg is 
justly celebrated for its beauty. The little river Murg runs rapidly 
along its winding depth, bearing with it timber from the forest, to 
be formed into rafts and floated away to the larger rivers. Villages 
dot the green meadows and sides of the valley, and saw-mills are 
busy, turned by the stream. Here aloft, on the edge of the forest, 
stands the castle of the Grand Duke, also on the edge of his 
territory, for the other bank of the Murg is in Wiirtemberg. 
Behind it tower aloft the black pine woods; deep glens filled with 
the same, sink below to the right and left; and the castle on its 
projecting rock looks out cheerfully up and down the delicious 
valley. A stone figure of a huge boar seated on his haunches, is 
mounted on a lofty pedestal of masonry in front of the castle, and 
is at once a good object, and symbolic of the name of the place — 
Eberstein, the Wild-Boar's Stone; so called from a tremendous boar 



- nrasY. 

which formerly made its basking-place on the rock. Xow a sweet 
little flower-garden basks more homelike in the son. and around 

- the brooding solitude of the black mountain woods. 

We descended the deep hollow road into the valley, and at 
Herrenalp, a village down the valle; stayed to lunch. Here we 
walked out amongst the ruins of an extensive conve. - "roved in 
the Peasants' War; and entered the parish school, which we found 
in the yet remaining portion of the building, and had much con- 
versation with the schoolmaster, a simple and sensible man. who 
seemed well suited to the place and his ofnce. 

It was at the inn here that our kutcher found the '-'liebes. 
gutes Herz/' which is mentioned in the chapter on German Pecu- 
liarities of Character and beginning to sing his Swiss songs soon 
after we set off, presently capsized us into a ditch. The way after 
quitting Herrenalp was calculated to give us a favourable idea of 
Wiirtembersr. It was over an elevated road; with wide views of a 
countrv beautifullv varied, but not too hillv, and full of vinevards, 
corn-fields scattered with fruit trees, and here and there a wood of 
silver or Scotch fir; the whole looking like one happy garden land, 
and the peasantry in it all busy and cheerful. To our great 
pleasure, it continued thus many miles, the sun shining over all 
most gladsomely. Then we came to a hollow dry glade, scattered 
with picturesque old oaks, where as picturesque a lad was herding 
his flock of swine, and soon after we descended a steep road to 
Xeuenburg. At this large village, or little town, we enacted a 
deed of patriotism ; for, notwithstanding we should have been glad 
to dine here, as we found the landlord of the only inn, the Post, 
marked in the Hand-Book as having played a scurvy trick on an 
English traveller, refusing him post-horses because he grumbled at 
an extortionate bill, we refused to so in, and told him whv. He 
said: "0 yes! he remembered the Englishman well; and the 
fact was, that he wanted him to give him a bribe to speak well of 
his inn in the Hand-Book, which he refused, and on which the man 
went away and gave this report, nothing of the kind having in fact 
taken place." We, however, heroically stood up for the truth and 
justice of our countryman (would he have done as much for us ? ) 
and passed the required time for the feeding of our horses in 
ascending to the old castle, admiring the views from it, noticing 



266 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the ancient appearance of the town below, and the church just 
under us falling piecemeal to decay. We found the castle occupied 
by the collector of the taxes for the district; wandered round its 
extensive old orchard, and garden walls buried in masses of ivy; 
listened to the loud chorus of thousands of grilli singing in the 
sun; and made acquaintance with a venerable winking owl in the 
ivy-tod. 

As we approached Wildbad, the scenery became again more and 
more like that of the Black Forest. All the hill-tops were covered 
with sable pine woods, while deep between ran the valleys with 
rapid streams, and meadows intensely green. The valley of the 
Enz, in which Wildbad lies, is very singular and striking. High 
above, stretch the long unbroken slopes of pine; lower down, he 
cultivated hanging fields, with houses and fruit trees in abundance; 
at bottom, richest meadows, dotted over with wooden barns, grey 
and weather-beaten, in which all the hay is housed; while the river 
hurries along, bearing with it endless quantities of timber and slabs 
of wood. Every few hundred yards are weirs and locks, and a sort 
of traps for timber. Here the pines, which on certain occasions are 
floated along by letting loose great reservoirs of water in the moun- 
tains, are made into small rafts, and guided down to the larger 
rivers. Here are saw-mills busy ripping up vast quantities also 
of this timber. You meet everywhere wagons loaded with these 
boards. You see them stacked up in great piles to dry. Every 
place abounds with wood, and bears evidence to the great traffic of 
the country- On the hill sides you see the smoke of charcoal fires, 
other charcoal floors piled with wood ready for burning, and loads 
of charcoal also on the road. Here and there you see men with 
long hooks busy loosening wood in the stream which has lodged, 
and obstructs the descent of the rest; and as for the wood itself, it 
is perpetually tossing along the stream in the most restless and 
whimsical manner. Slabs, boards, and fire timber in pieces about 
four feet long, all arc in hurry and galloping along the waters, and 
present one of the oddest sights imaginable. 

As you approach Wildbad, the ranges of hills become higher 
and higher, and more unbroken, the valley narrower, and the whole 
scene assumes a wilder and sterner character. After immediately 
quitting Baden, the change to Wildbad is not attractive. The 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 267 

place is a long, ordinary German dorf. It has nothing alluring in 
its aspect; and the country around has a sternness and a solitary 
wildness, which makes a disadvantageous comparison with the 
open riant vale and country of Baden. In fact, you find yourself 
walled in in a deep narrow glen of the Black Forest between two 
long and lofty ranges of pine-clad mountains ; and wherever you 
look, you find no objects of that character which are calculated to 
enliven the spirits of an invalid. Dr. Granville has cried up the 
place into some notoriety; and much benefit having been received 
by some Russian princes there, a tolerable amount of company has 
been drawn thither; but it can never become a formidable rival 
of Baden. It wants the room, the cheerful open vale, the lively 
variety of hill and dale of Baden ; and the long, monotonous ranges 
of the pine hills seem to shut you out from the rest of the universe. 
Yet new baths are building; an immense and dashing hotel, the 
Belle Vue, is already erected, where we found ourselves received 
by a very grand porter in livery and a polite landlord, but with 
more splendour than comfort. It was here that we began to be 
treated to those damp sheets which we found afterwards so very 
common in the south and east of Germany, but which they tell 
you, while they cling round you like a skin, are not damp — only a 
little fresh. 

In Wildbad, we met with two of our Heidelberg friends, the 
amiable Geheimrathin Ehrhard and her amiable daughter, with 
whom we walked down the valley of the Enz, and found its land 
full of the upper and nether springs, of little headlong brooks and 
streams, tumbling from the mountains like boys rolling down a hill 
till they are too dizzy to stop themselves. 

To enjoy a place like Wildbad we should not look upon it as a 
place so much affording amusement in itself, as a centre from which 
to plunge in various directions into the wild and primitive regions 
of the Black Forest, which still extends itself from this neighbour- 
hood to Basle and Constance. To explore the deep woods, the 
wild lakes and waters; to chase the boar from his recesses beneath 
the thickest shades of the old pine woods, the haunts of the spirits 
Glassm'annlein and Hollander Michel; to talk with the woodmen, 
the charcoal-burners, and the busy wooden clockmakers of Friburg, 
and see the timber-floaters preparing their rafts, and setting forth 



268 



CHARACTERISTICS OF 



on their voyage to the Rhine and to Holland. Our route was 
different. We went up through the woods by a new road not 
then quite completed, leading thence to Stuttgard. The woods 
seemed unending, and we went on, again admiring the splendid 
growth and noble figure of these lordly pines. Great numbers of 
men were busy finishing the road, from which we issued into a 
livelier region of oak and beech woods, with deep views of narrow 
valleys lying between. Here were prospects over afar country; and 
here a village lying in its own little opening in the woods, so clean, 
so quiet, so picturesque, and so shut out from the rest of mankind, 
that it seemed a spot for the inhabitants to dream over their very 
work in the sunny fields, and for legends and old-world stories to 
linger in for ever. 

On the descending slope of these hills we paused at the beauti- 
fully lying and happy-looking town of Hirschau, where are some 




manufactories of blue cloth, and attended by a sensible peasant- 
woman, wandered through the extensive ruins of the castle and 




GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 269 

convent, destroyed by the savage Melac, in the war of the Pala- 
tinate, in the seventeenth century. Here, in what was once the 
church, but is now a garden, wc saw the tomb of the celebrated 
Bishop Aurelius, which was only discovered two or three years ago. 
We dined at the busy, manufacturing, yet miserable looking old town 
of Calw, where a Gasthaus, promising little, produced at a very cheap 
rate a most excellent dinner and good wine. Our way hence was 
through unending corn-fields, all the way to Stuttgard. The people 
in the Swabian costume; the men in the 
small black scull-cap, black leather breeches, 
and long light-coloured coats; others in 
this dress, with short jackets, remind us 
unavoidably of the figure of the Sieben 
Schwaben in the Folks Books. The women 
in a little black head-dress of ribbon and 
lace, having also very broad short waists, 
wonderfully thick full skirts, and high- 
heeled shoes. 

About four miles from Stuttgard we passed the royal park, 
called the Solitude, with a fence of boards of a very un-English 
look. We could not sufficiently enjoy, in the fineness of the 
weather, the wide clear prospects, the country full of busy happy- 
looking people gathering their corn; and not less, the profusion of 
beautiful wild-flowers which grew in the openings of the unfenced 
woods and by the road side. They were such as are common to 
our gardens, but not to our fields. Amongst them were some 
splendid specimens of salvias, and others that we did not know. 
The wild pinks were profusely abundant and beautiful; many of 
them with their intense crimson, marking the turf between the 
beech woods with their vivid bloom, and others, a foot or more in 
height, of fringed lilac, and of the most delicious odour. The 
charm of all woods lying open as you travel, is inexpressible. We 
descended at every slight ascent in the roads from the carriage, 
strolled sometimes through the woods, sometimes along the grassy 
margins of the road, and at one grasp could take up a whole sheaf 
of flowers, that would have been the pride of our gardens, and 
that to the great amusement of our bluff kutcher, who had been 
accustomed to see them on the road-side all his life. 



270 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

STUTTGARD. 

Evening saw us descending into Stuttgard, and enter which 
way you will, you must descend. Stuttgard is another of the 
German capitals which appears to have been set down by accident. 
It lies in the bottom of a deep basin, and is surrounded by hills 
covered with vineyards, and very barely diversified with trees, so 
that in summer it is intensely hot. The winds pass over it, and 
the rays of the sun striking on the high enveloping slopes, make it 
something like a brass basin on a good fire. One might have 
imagined that it was the bank of some inviting river which had 
induced this location — but no. There is no river at all; and to 
create the presence of water, a series of ponds has been made in 
the public gardens, which, being totally stagnant, are in this boiling 
hollow, not refreshments, but additional nuisances. What makes 
it the more remarkable is, that Stuttgard is likewise quite a modern 
city; and only two English miles off lies the delightful Neckar, in 
a beautiful country, which offered its attractions and advantages for 
the founding of a capital to the blind mortals who set it down here. 
Stuttgard, which might possibly be a little dull, as a place of 
residence, is a very agreeable little city to visit. Its population 
does not amount to forty thousand, yet there is much more evidence 
of life than in Carlsruhe. Its main street, the Konigs Strasse, is 
a noble one, running through the whole city; and the castle, the 
palace, the theatre, the parliament-house, its squares and churches, 
give it much more of variety. Here too is an immense barracks 
of soldiers, and their parade and moving to and fro add to the 
vivacity of the scene. The people too are very cordial and hos- 
pitable, well meriting the character of Die guten Schwaben; the 
good Svvabians. The residence of Danecker, and of many cele- 
brated men, has also given a feeling of art and literature to the 
place, besides that it lies in a beautiful and flourishing country. 
The worst things about it are its immediate position, the blinding 
hills around it, the want of water, and the glaring whiteness of its 
streets and houses — a general drawback to German towns, where 
the houses must all be white, to the severe trial of your eyesight 
in the blazing summer sunshine. 

Our inn was in the Post Platz, formerly the Waldhorn, now 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 271 

the Hotel de Russie, one of the most charming inns of Germany. 
We were at once at home here, in its clean, elegant, comfortable 
rooms. The landlord himself was one of the most polite and 
friendly men imaginable; and, as a natural consequence, the same 
spirit was visible amongst all the servants. There was a zealous, 
though not fussy appearance of desire to make you quite at home. 
Tea and breakfast, which we took in our own rooms, were served 
elegantly and promptly, and our longer abode only confirmed our 
first impressions. 

The next day being Sunday, enabled us to take a view in our 
walk through the city, of the general air and appearance of the 
Stuttgard people. As everywhere else in Germany, they were a 
well-dressed and happy-looking population, swarming abroad in 
the streets, the palace gardens, and into the country on all sides. 

The castle, or old palace, soon arrested our attention in the 
heart of the city, by its size and old feudal air, so different to the 
buildings around, which have sprung up during the last forty years. 
Its lofty towers and battlements ; its heavy-arched gateways, and 
pillared courts traversed by slow-passing sentinels, seemed to 
belong to the days of Ulric of Wurtemberg, and the times so well 
described in Hauff's Lichstenstein, when the sovereign was ex- 
pelled by bis nobles for his oppressions, and they in turn were 
pursued for theirs by the enraged peasantry, their castles burned, 
and themselves massacred when taken, in the servile war so well 
known in German history, as the Bauern-Krieg. 

Near this old palace, and in front of the Stiffs Kirche, stands 
the statue of Schiller by Thorwaldsen, cast in bronze by Stiegel- 
meyer of Munich. It is a figure larger than life, wrapped in a 
long robe and crowned with laurel. The head is inclined, as deeply 
thinking. I cannot say that it strikes me as one of Thorwaldsen's 
happiest efforts, nor to be compared at all in merit to Danecker's 
fine intellectual bust. The figures of Schiller in plaster are minia- 
ture copies of this statue. 

The new palace stands not far from the old, in a fine open space, 
with avenues of trees, and its extensive gardens coming up to one 
side of it. It is a building of great extent ; its chief front fine, 
and surmounted by a huge gilt crown, which has been much 
criticised. The palace itself, however, has a cheerful and very 



272 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

homelike air. With the exception of the great crown, it has too 
a very unpretending air; and its gardens full of flowers and orange 
trees, and a fine group of nymphs by Danecker, make a very agree- 
able impression on the spectator. 

The house and studio of Danecker are near the palace. The 
house is small and modest, seeming by its contrast with the palace 
and theatre and other buildings around, to say as plainly as possible 
that genius beautifies large houses, but does not dwell in them. 
The interior had the same domestic look; yet you saw at once that 
you had entered the abode of mind. A maid-servant opened the 
door for us, and conducted us into the studio. An outer room was 
filled with casts from the most celebrated antiques; as, the Apollo 
Belvedere, the Venus de Medici, the Head of Antinuous, the Sleep- 
ing Fawn, the Achilles, the Dying Gladiator, the Head of Minerva, 
etc. The studio itself seems to present to you the history of the 
artist. The walls were covered with rough sketches. There were 
numbers of first attempts, and the models of works afterwards 
completed and become celebrated. There stood the model of the 
first work which won him fame, the Milo of Cortona. But glorious 
amidst these stood forth one of his most noble works, the magnifi- 
cent bust of Schiller. We had heard that Danecker in his latter 
years, and when his genius was sinking beneath the ruins of a 
time-worn constitution, had, with a fatal fondness, been perpetually 
at work on this splendid image of his old friend and countryman, 
touching and retouching till he had annihilated the most striking- 
marks of genius. How great was our surprise and pleasure to find 
how happily unfounded this was. If it be indeed now inferior to 
what it ever was, we may lament the fact; but we cannot in any 
degree feel sensible of it, for a more beautifully expressive bust 
cannot be imagined. It is colossal, but only enough so to answer 
to our conception of the genius of the man. The fine philosophic 
calm, the lofty, pure, and gentle humanity which breathes from 
every feature, are wholly worthy of both the poet and the sculptor. 
The author of « Wallcnstein" and " The Bobbers" stands before 
us as we imagine him in the moment when he had sketched the 
lovely character of Thekla, or the erratic nobility of Karl Moor, 
and reflected on his work with the deep satisfaction of the intel- 
lectual creator, who feels that he has realised his finest conceptions 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 273 

of human nature, and conferred on mankind a perpetual addition 
to their objects of admiration and affection. 

By this grand achievement of united friendship and genius 
stands the first bust of Schiller, taken from the life, and which 
so much disappointed him, inspiring him with a despairing feeling, 
that while retaining an exact likeness, he had conveyed with it 
no idea of the poet's power and sentiment. The conception of 
the poet and the philosopher in the mind of the artist was far 
greater, as it must be in those of his readers, than the actual 
dimensions of the physical man; and it was only when he amplified 
his idea in the marble, that he found it at all commensurate with his 
internal sense. One sees at once, by the comparison here afforded, 
how astonished and disappointed he must have felt in beholding 
the bust after nature. There is all the likeness as preserved in the 
large head, but there is not that spirit of the broad and beautiful 
about it which animates this larger work. In the one, we have the 
physical form and dimension; in the other, that form and dimen- 
sion which Schiller would present to the imagination of Danecker 
as he lived before him in the serene greatness of his genius. In 
the one, we have the real poet, godlike, and in that " large utter- 
ance" which the power of mind gave to the outward form; in the 
other, that outward form as it would appear to the eye ignorant of 
his great and generous genius. There is also a cast of Schiller's 
features taken after death, equally bearing testimony to the fidelity 
of the sculptor in preserving the genuine features of the man, while 
by his faculty of ideality he has given to us a satisfying image of 
the greatest writer of Germany, so far as true greatness consists in 
a godlike use of godlike faculties and qualities, a lofty and inde- 
pendent nature, a noble heart, a proud and magnanimous love of 
freedom and of intellect, and an incorruptible sentiment of purity, 
modesty, affection, and gentleness. 

A cast of his bust of Goethe, equally excellent in its kind, 
testifies how perfectly Danecker had entered into the differing 
genius of the two great intellectual lights of Germany. Here 
stands Schiller in his simple greatness, the very embodiment of a 
man who bore his faculties meekly; here Goethe, in his more 
knowing and many-sided character. Here is the unworldly, pure, 
patriotic and philosophic essence; here the courtier, the Geheimrathj 

T 



274 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the man of the world and the age. Here the broad, transparent 
mind, which seeks and commands admiration rather by its clear 
breadth, by the grasp and compass of a production as a whole, than 
by the verbal and fanciful beauties of any individual part. Here 
the restless, active, subtle and searching spirit which pores into all 
corners of life, systematically clothes itself with all knowledge and 
accomplishments, has the same relish for the satirical as the tender, 
for the ridiculous as the passionate, and follows the bizarre adven- 
tures of Faust and Mephistophiles with as much gusto as he dwells 
on the morbid sensibility of Werter, or the patriotic plans of 
Egmont. The one, calling us up to the heights of loftiest huma- 
nity, of philosophic purity and generous heroism, with the eloquent 
earnestness of a demi-god; the other, like his own demoniac hero, 
appearing in all places, in all shapes and disguises, dancing with 
witches on the Brocken, with handwerk-burschen and their fat 
maidens at the Wirthshaus, lingering for months in a company of 
strolling players, now hammer in hand geologizing, now philoso- 
phizing on light and colours, now throwing off endless slight 
snatches of wit or satire, complimentary or jovial song, and now 
seriously working out a splendid tragedy, presenting to you in all 
his sorrows a Tasso or an Iphigenia, with the most living fire of 
passion and heroic greatness of sentiment. The one, perhaps, the 
most wonderful in the extent and variety of his powers, his tastes, 
his acquirements and experience; the other, more sublimely great 
by the full and conscientious embodiment in himself of all that 
is high, and pure, and magnanimous in the heart and soul of man. 
The simple-minded sculptor has given to his country, and to 
the civilised world, gifts of inestimable value in the exquisite busts 
of these two great men ; but he has given to mankind at large 
a still more precious one in his statue of the Christ. This, which 
was his favourite work, the offspring of his inmost heart and mind, 
has been often sharply criticised, and much carped at by some of 
his own countrymen. Bonstetten, in a letter to Frcderikc Brunn, 
from Stuttgard, in 1822, says, " I was yesterday with Danccker. 
I thought myself in Italy, and sought you in all corners. Daxtecker 
was so kind to me ! He spoke his inmost thoughts to me. For 
three years he has been employed on a statue of Christ, which 
commands his whole soul, lie related to me many thiugs of ladies 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. '>?75 

and children, who, at the sight of the statue, were so £ „atly moved 
that it gave him the greatest joy. I restrained myself from saying 
that they would have wept just as much before the most wretched 
image of the Virgin, as perhaps the Egyptians before their dogs 
and birds heads. To me, this statue of Jesus, which the Empress- 
Mother has ordered for Petersburg, is not striking. I hate alle- 
gorical images in general, and Jesus-god is to me too metaphysical 
for an image. Very beautiful it cannot be, on account of the 
coarse clothing. Bodily beautiful as Apollo or Hebe, it may not 
be. The gentlemen from Olympus are beautiful, since they are 
idealized men; but a god-man appears to me as adventurous as an 
Anubis with a dog's head. As I observed to Danecker that there 
was something in the under-lip from the Apollo, he told me that 
he had been obliged to chase Apollo out of his studio as a seducer. 
The Jesus strikes me as a handsome country clergyman. Michael 
Angelo alone has in his Moses hit off our demi-gods. But 
Danecker is quite Michael Angelo in Schiller's bust. Flesh, life, 
and truth are in his bust so as they are in no others. There is no 
death in his marble — not in the eyes, even, — and there reigns a 
German nobility in his portraits which cling fast to the truth, but 
fully reach it." 

The remark of Bonstetten, that a Jesus-god is too metaphysical 
to be beautiful, will probably be by many thought itself more 
metaphysical than just. His observation that a man-god cannot be 
made beautiful as the mythologic deities, is little short of absurd ; 
for all these idealized men which he so much admired, were in the 
(.yes of their worshippers, men-gods. Our gifted and art-loving 
countrywoman, Mrs. Jameson, who is moreover an enthusiastic 
admirer of Danecker' s genius, has, on the contrary, not found his 
statue equal to her ideal of the subject; while to me it appears 
one of the most holily successful creations of genius that modern 
times have produced. The Ariadne, of which here is a cast, and of 
which I have seen the finished work in Frankfort, is full of the 
poetical felicity of its mythological subject, and places Danecker 
amongst the ablest creators of grace and beauty. Seated on her 
panther, she looks forward into the Olympic heaven, to which she 
is approaching as the bride of a god, and yet with the sure confi- 
dence of that beauty which Schiller so finely says, is a born queen, 



276 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

that she is worthy of her destiny. But what a far higher and more 
difficult subject is the Christ. The very fact of the man-god., 
which in the eyes of Bonstetten stands in the way of its success, 
only serves to enhance immeasurably the glory of success where it 
is achieved, — the mystery of Christ's unparalleled position, of this 
unparalleled phenomenon; the strange and mysterious blending of 
the qualities and powers of the two natures; the God in the hum- 
blest walks of humanity; the man permeated and etherealized by 
the God. Yet, to my feeling, Danecker has in nothing succeeded 
more than in this daring and most arduous attempt. It was after 
his own heart and soul, and in none of his works do we find so 
much of his own peculiar character, that of simple spirituality and 
deep devotion. 

The finished work, as remarked by Bonstetten, is gone to 
Russia; but the model, in clay, stands in the Spital Kirche, the 
munificent present of the artist himself. There it stands, seeming 
to cast around it an atmosphere of peace and holiness. The figure 
is above the size of life, wrapped in a rather tight robe, such as 
he is represented to have worn, which, without any ornament in 
itself, yet displays the figure of the Saviour in the freshness of 
youth, with sufficient grace for him who was to appear on the earth 
without il mark or comeliness," attracting attention not so much 
by personal beauty as by his divine disposition. It is in the head 
and face, which are at once youthful, noble, and dignified, that this 
sentiment and character are most eminently displayed. You feel 
that such might Christ have appeared in the streets of Jerusalem, 
in the mountains and fields, and by the waysides of Judea. The 
young and earnest man, with his divine character written broadly 
on his whole form, but more pre-eminently in his face. The 
phrenological character of his head has not been forgotten : there 
must exist a godlike intellect, a godlike benevolence; pity, deep as 
from heaven to earth; firmness, calm but fixed, and clear as the sky; 
but nothing but a soul thoroughly penetrated with the sentiment of 
the New Testament, and with a living comprehension of the whole 
nature of Christ, could have stamped on clay the mingled attributes 
of divinity and humanity as they are here molten into one heavenly 
whole. The divine intellect, the authority without haughtiness, 
boundless love without passion; the most gracious tolerance, yet 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 277 

" severe in youthful beauty" enough to awe the presumptuous and 
denounce the base; the gentleness to feel for human sufferings, and 
the philosophic power to sustain his own : these all answer here to 
the requirings of your heart and understanding, a far more glorious 
result of the artist's deep spirit of love and adoration, than mere 
intellect could win from the highest combination of mythological 
beauty and sentiment. 

In the artist's studio were also the three heads of the Christ 
which he had successively modelled till he had completely deve- 
loped his conception, and each succeeding one shews for itself that 
each following attempt brought him nearer to it. By the side of 
these, his Psyche appeared somewhat childish. His Cupid, and the 
Nymph weeping over the dead bird; his St. John, his Sappho, and 
others, particularly charmed us; but a bust of Lavater, and two heads 
of a husband and wife whose names I have forgotten, attracted 
much more our admiration. Than the two latter nothing could be 
more beautiful, so full were they of affection, amiability, and refined 
mind. Besides these were heads numberless of kings and queens, 
dukes and duchesses; amongst them a very fine and characteristic 
one of Prince Metternich. Here also stood a little family group 
from the Plood, by Professor Wagner, a pupil of Danecker's, most 
exquisite in its natural pathos. 

It was a high gratification to us, after quitting the studio, to 
be introduced to the venerable sculptor himself. It was but just 
in time; they who seek him here now, will not find him — he is 
since deceased. We found him seated on an elevated wooden 
bench in his garden, under the shade of a large pear-tree, where 
he could overlook the square in which stands the Palace and 
Theatre, and amuse himself with watching the passing people. He 
was upwards of eighty years of age, of healthy but of feeble appear- 
ance, and looking himself like one of Homer's old men sitting on the 
wall of Troy in the sunshine, in the quiet enjoyment of nature's out- 
of-door blessings. We had heard that he was quite childish, and 
were agreeably surprised to find him so perfectly rational, collected, 
and with no further appearance of childishness than that resulting 
from the feebleness of old age. In his venerable face and long 
white locks we could recognise much of that simple and christian 
character which had dictated the statue of the Christ, and in his 



278 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

cordial manner, the spirit which he had drawn from Christ's religion. 
He came to meet us, told us he had planted that pear-tree with his 
own hands, as well as most of the plants in the garden, and gathered 
us pears, and roses for our daughter. Mrs. Danecker, who is much 
younger, appeared a very kind and judicious guardian of his age. 
Peace to the ashes of the good old man. 

The next visit in Stuttgard which gave us the most pleasure, 
was to Gustav Schwab, one of the most hearty and popular of the 
living writers of Germany. Gustav Schwab is a Protestant clergy- 
man, and a perfect specimen of "Der gute Swaben." He has written 
poetry, history, and much miscellaneous literature, all characterized 
by great talent and kind-heartedness. He seems particularly to 
delight in whatever does honour to his beautiful native state 
Wiirtemberg. He has described in graphic colours the interesting 
region of the Swabian Alps. He was the friend of Hauff, the 
young and popular romance writer, who was cut off too soon for 
his own full fame and the public enjoyment. We found Herr 
Schwab inhabiting a large old-fashioned parsonage, and just returned 
from delivering his forenoon sermon. He received us in the 
heartiest manner; and in truth, you saw at the first glance move 
conspicuously his native good cordial-heartedness, than his poetical 
character. He is about the middle height, broad built, with a 
reddish face, very round brown eyes, and a deal of rough, short, 
straight grey hair. He entered from a side door, with a profound 
bow and a wondering air; but when we made our explanations, 
he welcomed us in the warmest manner, and in a few moments we 
were talking of Hauff, of Lichstenstein, of Swabia, of poetry, as 
if we had been acquainted for years. He took us into his study; a 
large old room full of books, and ornamented with a bust of Hauff 
and a portrait of the poet Uhland. He introduced us to his 
daughter, and to his wife; the latter, to all appearance, a genuine 
German housekeeper. He appeared delighted to learn that I had 
translated, in " The Student Life of Germany," one or two of his 
Student songs, in particular his " Bursche's Departure/' He told 
this to his wife with great animation, saying to us, as he pointed 
to her, ' ' There is the Liebchen of the song \" 

At the table d'hote wc found several English. The obliging host, 
after dinner, drove us out in his handsome carriage to Kanstadt, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 279 

a watering-place some six miles off, very agreeably situated near 
the Neckar. Here we wandered over the hills, having a fine view 
of the hills round Stuttgard; and on our right of lloscnstein, a 
summer palace of the king; and then entered the Kursaal, a hand- 
some new building, behind and within which spout up fountains 
of the bright effervescing water, much resembling Seltzer water. 
Here the country people, and also crowds from Stuttgard, were 
walking about or in the gardens and avenues, in great enjoyment. 
The hall is adorned with beautifully painted ceilings, and has on 
its walls views of the most celebrated baths in Germany. The 
most striking thing to see is, how much is done everywhere for the 
public enjoyment of the people, and how perfectly natural they 
seem to think that it should be so. 

4 - JOURNEY TO MUNICH, BY TUBINGEN, ULM, 
AND AUGSBURG. 

Here we dismissed our bluff, but with the serious exception 
of capsizing us, very tolerable old Kutscher, and engaged one 
returning to Tubingen, a tall, thin, chattering fellow, in a great 
pair of old boots. This man was loud in his praises of Wlirtem- 
burg. Ah ! we should see a country now ! He would go all the 
way to Augsburg with us. He knew the Swabian Alps, Lichsten- 
stein, the Nebel Hbhle, and heaven knows what. He went singing 
along, on his dicky, "Der Wirthhi Tbchterlein," and other songs of 
Uhland, the poet of his native Tubingen. Who shall say that a 
prophet has no honour in his own country? And truly a lovely 
country it was; not in any great or romantic features, but waving 
in hill and dale, all full of sunshine, corn-fields, vineyards, fruit 
trees, and a busy, sunny, and happy looking peasantry. Our 
jolly leather-legs, as we named him from his great boots, drew up 
at the dirty, yet interesting dorf of Waldenbuch, where we were 
received by the good talkative host, mentioned at page 193, and 
conducted by him to the grave of Danecker's parents; for Danecker 
was born here, being the son of a groom of the Duke of Wurtem- 
berg, and himself a stable boy. How many great sculptors have 
risen from such a station! Here we saw the solitary apothecary, 
and heard the adventures of the sledging-party, also mentioned in 
the same place. 



£80 CHAKACTEJtISTICS OF 

Of the old-fashioned university town of Tubingen we need not 
say more than that it is sweetly seated by the Neckar, in an opening 
in a range of hills that stand in the level country; has steep streets, 
an old castle, an old University (a new and splendid one is now 
building), old houses, an old-world-looking set of long-haired 
students; an old inn, with old looking-glasses set aloft on the walls 
for giants to look into them, but quite out of the reach of ordinary 
men ; and an old table d'hote, where some of the oldest-fashioned 
and blacksmith-looking people were assembled that we ever saw, 
all of whom we were assured were noble, with some young men, 
also noble, part of them being modern and fantastic, and part 
antediluvian. 

But in this town, which has educated numbers of the most 
celebrated men of Germany, and has stood many a siege and storm 
in the stormy times of the nation, lives Uhland, one of the oldest 
and one of the finest lyrical poets of his country. Like his town 
and townsmen, Uhland has somewhat of an old-world look. He 
has never travelled much from home; has a nervous manner, and 
that the more remarkable in a man who, as a member of the Wiir- 
temberg parliament, has distinguished himself as a bold speaker 
and maintainer of the most liberal principles. In consequence of 
his very liberal political creed, he has now withdrawn both from 
the chamber and from his professorship in the University; and pos- 
sessing a competent fortune, devotes his life to life's happiest, and 
one of its most honourable pursuits, that of poetry. It has been 
said of him, by a witty townsman, that he is a genuine nightingale ; 
to be heard and not seen. But this is a little too severe. Though 
somewhat plain in person, and fidgety in manner, these are things 
which are speedily forgotten in the enthusiasm of intellectual con- 
versation. He lives in a house on the hill-side overlooking the 
Neckar bridge, as you go out towards Ulm. Above lie his pleasant 
garden and vineyard, and hence he has a full view of the distant 
Swabian Alps, shutting in with their varied outlines one of the 
most rich, beautiful, and animated landscapes in that pleasant 
Swabian land. His wife, a bright-looking cheerful lady, came in 
from the garden with her work-basket, in which was an English 
edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, which she had been reading. 
She appeared well used to society, and very well read and intelli- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 281 

gent. They have no children, but have adopted a very pretty 
sharp boy as their foster son. Uhland, indeed, appears to lead a 
happy and independent life here. Happy in his amiable and 
sensible wife, who highly admires his genius, and in the midst of 
his native scenes, to which, like all Swabians, he is much attached, 
and enjoying throughout Germany a high and firm reputation. 

Uhland has rarely attempted any poems of much length. His 
forte lies in lyrical harmony, and felicity of expressing the poetry 
of human life and of the national taste. Simplicity, elegance, and 
imaginative essence, eminently characterise his productions. In 
simplicity he often reminds you of Wordsworth in his small poems, 
as his "Lucy Grey/' his Ci Ruth," his "We are Seven," etc.; but 
unlike Wordsworth, he is never metaphysical. The Germans have 
so much of metaphysics in cloudy, long-winded, and unintelligible 
prose, that they have a very natural abhorrence of it in poetry. 
Hence they cannot bear Wordsworth, and have little relish for 
more of Coleridge than his " Ancient Mariner." Uhland' s " Der 
Wirthin Tbchterlein," — the Landlady's Daughter, — is a perfect 
specimen of truest pathos in the extremest simplicity. It is set to 
music as purely simple, and is sung and played with enthusiasm 
all over Germany. 

Uhland has the rare art of saying much in few words, and 
these too, words of no pretence to startling or astonishing power; 
but they are the true servants of the imaginative faculty, and 
convey far more to the mind than to the ear or eye of the reader. 
He rejoices in all the amenities of the seasons and of nature. 
"The Boy on the Hills," "The Shepherd's Sunday Song," "The 
Gardener's Song," "The Mild Day," "The Herd Boy," "The 
Churchyard in Spring," "The Songs in Spring," "The Gossamer," 
" The Lark," " May Dew," " The Poppy and Mallow in the Fields," 
" The Hunter's and Wanderer's Songs," and numbers of such 
things, which in ordinary hands would be very ordinary affairs, 
are made to speak the sentiments of a heart and soul in fullest 
union with nature and with man. His Fatherland Songs are 
equally full of the spirit of patriotism. In every custom, ceremony, 
and feeling of social life, he is the representative of the popular 
feeling, in the happy and the sorrowful, the festive and the sober. 
The opening or the closing scenes of life ; the garland of the bride, 



282 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

and of the funeral ; the tears of separation and of perished love ; 
the song of the poor man, and the triumphant lay of the victorious 
soldier, — all find their natural and their necessary place in his 
poetry. But where he seems even still more to be at home, is in 
the romantic regions of the Middle Ages. Almost all the striking 
characters of the old romances have a tribute, almost all their 
noblest incidents have received from his pencil new life and a new 
colouring. In these he has confined himself to no one country, 
and besides the " Little Roland," " Roland the Shield-bearer," 
" Siegfried's Sword," " Bertram de Bora," " Ritter Paris," " The 
Ritter St. George," " The Jungfrau Sieglinde," " Charlemagne's 
Voyage," " The Blind King," " The Dying Hero," " The Lost 
Church," " The Sunken Convent," u Robert of Normandy," etc. ; 
the English reader will find the " Chase of Winchester," that is, 
the Death of Rufus, " Merlin," and " The Luck of Eden Hall." 

Our journey on leaving Tubingen was still through this cheer- 
ful, busy, corn-land of Wiirtemberg, the Swabian Alps rising more 
and more distinct before us. These are hills which, though called 
alps, are of no very great elevation, but very much varied in their 
outlines, and very attractive in their aspect; — vineyards below, 
where their feet stretched themselves into the richly-cultivated 
plain, and old castles, and lofty peaks, and solemn woods above. 
We were now in the very midst of the scenes of Hauff's admirable 
story of " Lichstenstein." There was the little fortified town of 
Reutlingen. There were the peasant girls, exactly such in person 
and costume as described by him. The yellow hair uncovered 
with cap or bonnet, and falling down the back in two long tails 
plaited through and through with many-coloured ribbons. The 
round, friendly faces, full of health, tinged with the sun, but not so 
much so as to darken the lovely youthful rose of the cheeks. The 
lively blue eyes glancing beneath the long lashes. The white and 
many-plaited sleeves, covering the comely arms to the wrists; 
the red bodice, or Mieder, as they call it, laced with silver chains 
across the front, and bound with white and ornamental lines, fitting 
neatly to the body ; with a short, full, black petticoat, reaching 
scarcely over the knee. The snow-white jaunty apron, and white 
stockings with tall clocks, held up by handsomely embroidered 
garters. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 283 

Presently we were in Pfiillingcn itself, the dorf whence George 
Sturmfeder, the hero of the story, set out to Lichstenstein castle; 
and in the very inn where he passed some of the most torturing 
hours of his life. It was curious to hear the very dialect spoken 
by the pretty Barbele, the daughter of the Piper of Hardt, and the 
"runde Frau," her mother, spoken all around us, and to see 
the vast popularity which Hauff s romance had attained here. The 
rooms in the little inn were all adorned with rude, coloured prints 
from the story. The Wirth, the most goodnatured of his good- 
natured profession here, was delighted that we foreigners were so 
much charmed with their favourite writer. He brought us out 
HaufFs works, and all the people came to talk of Hauff and his 
capital story. But they told us one thing that was not very 
agreeable. That the Graf Wilhelm of Wiirtemberg had rebuilt 
the castle since the celebrity it had acquired through this story, 
but that it was not yet internally completed, and till then he had 
strictly forbidden any one to see it. We were resolved to go to it, 
were it only to see its situation and exterior. Then off ran our 
good host to get us a vorspan, that is, an additional pair of horses, 
as the ascent was about six miles and very steep. He told us what 
we were to pay for it, and then, after scratching his head, and 
putting his finger to his nose in very German style several times, 
and saying it was very unlucky that we could not see the inside of 
the Schloss, suddenly he recollected that he had a very good friend 
in the master painter there, and down he sate and wrote a letter 
to him that he thought would open the doors to us. All this the 
good fellow did, though we could scarcely spend a kreutzer with 
him, having just before breakfasted; but that he said, throwing up 
his hands, was nothing, it was his pleasure, it was his duty; and 
he was delighted to assist foreigners who were admirers of Hauff. 
In short, so goodnatured a fellow never was seen. 

Away then we went towards Lichstenstein. The hills reared 
themselves in many a tempting form before us. The way became 
steeper and steeper. We got out and walked up before the carriage. 
Wild flowers of many beautiful kinds, and wild raspberries in abun- 
dance, invited us forward through the mountain roads. As from 
time to time we looked behind us, the views of the green valleys, 
forests, villages, and far-stretching country below, became more and 



284 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

more enchanting. In about two hours we seemed to have reached 
the height of the hills. Our guide with his vorspan led us through 
woods and untrodden grass, till halting in a thicket, he told us we 
must here descend to the Nebel Hohle, or Cave of Mist, where 
the expatriated Prince Ulric of Wiirtemberg had concealed himself 
from the pursuit of his nobles of the Swabian Band and their 
allies the Bavarians, coming every night to Lichstenstein for food 
and warmth, and standing before the drawbridge announced himself 
by saying: "Der Mann ist da" — The man is here. 

A boy had been sent before to give notice to a peasant of the 
next village who shews the cave, and he was there prepared with 
pine torches, by whose light we descended into this vast and truly 
fine cavern. The entrance is very small, in the side of the wooded 
hill, in a place very obscure; and being in Ulricas time only known 
to his firm adherent, the possessor of Lichstenstein, and its entrance 
concealed by thick boughs, it was a most secure though not very 
enviable retreat for the outlawed prince. Its stalactite halls and 
pillars, its fanciful throne, Ulricas cave aloft, far within the cavern, 
its echoes, and starry glare as lit up with the torches, are veiy 
graphically described by Hauff. We proceeded hence through woods 
and over corn-fields, down sudden descents and over actual rocks, 
without any real road — in a style which would have knocked any 
English carriage to pieces — and at length arrived at the castle 
itself. 

The delightful and impressive situation of Lichstenstein Schloss 
is one of the things of which neither pen nor pencil can give any 
adequate idea. With all the poetical enthusiasm with which Hauff 
has described it, he has still left you, on reaching it, a feeling of 
delightful surprise. It stands aloft in this elevated and solitary 
region, amidst brooding woods and alpine fields; and it is only 
when you come to its foot that you perceive that in front of it the 
ground is torn away and rent open into a deep and winding valley, 
the bottom of which nature and man have now clothed in the 
richest green; while on each hand, and at its head, where the 
castle stands, rise the great walls of rock, high and naked. Above 
these cliffs you see, right and left, woods and mountain tops, and 
in the valley below you lie smiling fields and villages, and beyond 
these opens out upon the plain this charming valley (where at its 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



285 



right-hand point rears itself a singular conical mountain), and gives 
a vast and airy prospect over the lower country. The castle itself 
is necessarily small — a true eagle's nest — standing at the head of 




this valley on an isolated mass of rock, and only accessible by a 
drawbridge; passing over which, you may look below and see the 
black precipices around descending to a vast depth. 

Our worthy host's letter had the desired effect. We found two 
artists here: one, the painter in question from Niirnberg; the 
other, a glass-painter from Regensburg. They were young, well- 
educated, and superior men. They had established themselves in 
a very characteristic style here, in a sort of outhouse fitted up for 
them near the castle, at once for their lodging and studio. Here 
we found them living with their great dogs, having beds and rude 
furniture knocked up for the occasion. There was a strange and 



286 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

picturesque confusion of drawings, colours, books — amongst them 
some of Scott's novels, — and household utensils scattered over the 
large room. The walls were all covered with designs in charcoal; 
some, fanciful and ludicrous whims of the hour; others, the first 
outlines of subjects to be worked out in the castle. Knapsacks, 
rolls of drawing-paper, and dishes and beer bottles, lay in singular 
conjunction. It was indeed a Robinson Crusoe sort of abode, and 
the inhabitants were in good keeping. The young glass-painter, 
in particular, was in appearance a thorough Bursch, with his loose 
surtout, long hair, open shirt-collar, and moustachios. He shewed 
us with much alacrity his painted glass for the windows, with coats 
of arms and historic figures, all most rich and beautiful. His brother 
painter, who was decorating the walls and ceilings of the interior, 
took us in and shewed us the works in progress. They were all 
in the beautiful style and taste of which we shall have to speak 
anon at Munich. The lower suite of rooms consists chiefly of the 
armoury, the library, and a sweet little chapel, then quite unfinished. 
Some of the ceilings were most gloriously carved; others had the 
walls painted in the most graceful richly-coloured arabesques, and 
scenes out of the history of Ulric, in connexion with the place, from 
the romance of Hauff. It is a proud thing for the fame of a young- 
author, that his pen should have thus raised again this castle to 
more than its ancient splendour, and that princes are ready to 
acknowledge native genius by their embellishing the scene of its 
triumph with its own proper trophies. Near the castle, too, on 
the edge of the precipice, and where one of the best views is com- 
manded, the Graf has placed on a short column a bust of the 
young author who has given so lasting a charm to this spot. 

We dined at the house of the Forstmeister near, which is also 
an inn, and were waited on by his pretty and merry daughter; and 
on leaving experienced a striking instance of good sense in a village 
B urgermeister. The man with the vorspan had contrived, while 
we were looking at the castle and dining, to persuade our kutcher 
that wc had another hill to ascend, and that it would be impossible 
for him to reach the next village without taking him farther. The 
Forstmeister' s daughter said: "Nothing of the kind; it was all 
descent, and most of it steep." Still the kutcher was so much 
frightened that he would not go on without the man. I therefore 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 287 

told the man that he might go on at a fixed price, and if there 
proved to be up-hill, [ would pay him, if nothing but down-hill, I 
would not. He went on, and all was rapid down-hill. "When, 
therefore, he took off his horses at the point where his homeward 
way diverged, I refused to pay him, and he became very violent 
and menacing. I told him, that if he insisted on the payment, he 
must come to the next village to the Bin-germeister, and ordered 
the coachman to drive on. He attempted to stop the horses, the 
coachman appeared frightened, and it seemed likely in that wild 
spot to be a troublesome affair. My firmness, however, prevailed; 
the coachman drove on, and the man followed. At the village inn 
I inquired for the Btirgermeister, and the Wirth cried out to a 
servant: "Hole den Schmied" — fetch the blacksmith. I replied, 
I did not want the blacksmith, but the Biirgermeister. " It is the 
same man," said he. Presently appeared the blacksmith, in his 
shirt-sleeves, and tolerably smutty, from the forge. When he had 
heard the case, and the man was running on very volubly in his 
Swabian dialect — "Stop \" said the worthy welder of iron. " There 
needs only one word. Did you put your horses before the carriage 
or behind it?" — "Before, to be sure," replied the man very con- 
fidently. — " Then," answered honest Vulcan, " you can go about 
your business. Everybody knows that it's all down hill from 
Lichstenstein hither — and who wants a vorspan to pull him down 
hill? Had you put your horses behind to drag, I would have 
awarded you your money." A number of people in the inn before 
which this primitive administration of justice took place, and 
amongst them some genteel-looking travellers, all applauded this 
judgment. Not the highest minister of the realm could have 
given a more prompt and better one, and certainly not a cheaper; 
for the good man refused to receive anything for his trouble, even 
to partake of a bottle of wine; but wiping his mouth on his shirt- 
sleeve, drank a glass of beer at his own cost, expressed his satis- 
faction in being able to prevent imposition on a stranger, and only 
begged, that if we saw a countryman of his in similar need, we 
would help him if we could. 

This night we slept at a dirty dorf amongst the hills. Our 
inn was the post, but the posts in villages are, as may be expected, 
generally wretched places. A dirty house, a dirty landlady, a 



288 



CHARACTERISTICS OF 



melancholy-looking landlord, a troop of dirty, squalling children, 
— these were the first miserable objects of our notice on entering. 
Our rooms upstairs were tolerable, but the floors under our feet 
were gritty; every thiDg had a dusty feeling; dead flies lay about; 
and who does not know the feeling of disgust towards every thing 
which such a spot creates ? Yet the man treated us with some 
excellent roe-venison to supper; and we gave orders to the coach- 
man to be moving very early in the morning. 

But who can sleep in a German dorf, especially on a summer's 
night ? At ten o'clock the watchman commences his rounds. In 
some eases he has a rattle, with which he introduces and concludes 
his call of the hour. In other cases a horn, which he blows lustily, 
on the good old principle of waking all the people every hour, to 
let them know that he is on duty, and at the same time if any 
thieves are about to give them notice to keep out of his way. 
Besides springing his rattle or blowing his horn, he sings out a 
rustic rhyme, varying it every hour with some piece of advice or 
moral saw. As in an old and very pious one : — 



Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
Ten has struck now by the bell. 
Ten are the Commandments given 
By the Lord our God from heaven. 

Human watch no good can yield us. 

God will watch us, God will shield us. 

May He,throughHisheavenlymight, 

Give us all a happy night. 

Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
'T has struck eleven by the bell. 
Eleven were the Apostles sound, 
Who did teach the whole world round. 
Human watch, etc. 

Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
Twelve has struck now by the bell. 
Twelve did follow Jesus' name, — 
Suffered with him all his shame. 
Human watch, etc. 

Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
One has struck now by the bell. 
One is God, and one alone, 
Who doth hear us when we groan. 
Human watch, etc. 



Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
Two has struck now by the bell. 
Two paths before our steps divide ; 
Man beware, and well decide. 
Human watch, etc. 

Hear, my masters, what 1 tell ! 
Three has struck now by the bell. 
Threefold is what's hallowed most — 
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
Human watch, etc. 

Hear, my masters, what I tell ! 
Four has struck now by the bell. 
Four times cur lands we plough and 

dress ; 
Thy heart, O man, till'st thou that 

less? 

Human watch no good can yield us ; 
God will watch us, God will shield 

us. 
May He, through His heaven I y 

might, 
Give us all a peaceful night ! 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 289 

Some watchmen are fond of a different, of a jocose and satirical 
strain — warn their neighbours to beware of fire and thieves, and 
to take good care of their wives and daughters. Thus they go on 
from ten till four o'clock, some with a longer story, some witfh-a 
shorter. In the mean time, as if the hourly watchman was not 
enough of a public disturber, on the church tower is stationed a- 
still more pestilent rogue. This is the fire watch, who often lives 
up in the church tower with his family. His business is to walk 
round the tower every quarter of an hour through the night, and 
watch if any fire is anywhere breaking out, either in this or the 
adjoining dorfs. Every quarter of an hour out he comes, marches 
round the balcony of the steeple, gives a tremendous and dolorous 
blast of his horn ; and if he luckily spies out a fire, rings lustily 
the alarm bell, or fires off a gun. In some towns a cannon is fired 
off when a fire is discovered breaking out anywhere in the night. 
If it be in the town itself, it is fired once; if in the country, twice. 

The street watchman and the fire watchman aloft having kept 
up this disturbance very manfully till about two o'clock, the cocks 
also crowing against one another from every part of the place, by 
that time all the hamlet is astir. They begin to let out their geese, 
which fly rejoicing, making a most infernal clangour up and down 
the streets, till the goosemaid or boy with infinite pains and pro- 
longation of the hubbub collects them together, and drives them 
out to the common feeding-ground. Then come out the cattle. 
There is a lowing here and a lowing there, as first one and then 
another bauer lets his loose, and they make their way to the village 
brunnen to drink, and then the cowherd collects them, or they are 
again immured in their stalls. Then rush out herds of swine, 
more wild and bedeviled than those which ran headlong into the 
sea in the country of the Gadarenes; huge, gaunt, long-legged, 
arch-backed, greyhound-stomached, with snouts double the length 
of any reasonable hogs' snouts, and manes like' their cousins- 
germ an the wild boars. Out they bolt savagely, here and there, 
as their various styes are opened, with screams and horrid guffaws, 
shaking each other by the ears, and scouring like hounds up the 
street, while the swineherd with his heavy-lashed whip, which he 
slings behind him, with enormous sweeps and snatches in a style 
peculiar to himself, makes the streets echo with as with so many 

u 



290 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

musket shots. This larum, mixed with plentiful quackling of 
ducks, rumbling of wagons, smacking of wagon-whips, cries of 
children beginning to play, and loud talking and greetings of the 
people going along, being somewhat abated, at three o'clock a bell 
rings, a band of musicians mount the church-tower, and there, 
with pipes and voices, commence lustily Luther's Morning Hymn. 

A fine old hymn is that of Luther, and a very pious and poetical 
custom is this of sounding it forth from the church-tower in a 
morning, but to the ears of weary travellers a little too soon, rather 
a little too soon, is this three o'clock serenade. Yet if one could 
but ejaculate a hasty prayer at "this sweet hour of prime," turn 
over and sleep again, it would not be much amiss. But at four 
the watchman goes off his post, and having it in commission from 
certain heavy sleepers to arouse them before he departs, he now 
goes from one door to another, thumps loudly with his staff, rings 
a bell if there be one, bawls up to the chamber-window, and having 
pretty well wakened the whole place, and being barked at by all 
the pent-up dogs in it, goes home no doubt with a very pleasing 
feeling of well-discharged duty, and with your hearty curse to boot. 
Now swarms the whole living hamlet abroad; children play, bauers 
shout and talk, wagons rumble on more livelily than ever, troops of 
men and women are seen going off to the fields with hoes or rakes 
over their shoulders, and just as you are dropping to sleep, your 
coachman knocks at your door and tells you that it is five, and 
the carriage ready below; for in summer, if you do not mean to 
be baked alive on the road, you must make good use of your 
mornings and evenings. 

Having passed much such an agreeable night here, at five we 
were on our way to Ulm. A lovely morning it was, and a lovely 
country we were in. Pleasant hills, covered with the most attractive 
woods, through which we walked at leisure; fields with far-off 
views; people busy in their corn; free airs blowing over us, and as 
we reached an open eminence what a startling surprise awaited us. 
It was the Alps ! Filling the whole horizon to the south, they 
stretched themselves into the blue ether, and glittered and flashed 
their eternal snows in the morning sun like the very hills of heaven . 
The sight was so sudden, so totally unexpected, so overpowering 
in its beauty and silent sublimity, that after an exclamation of 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 291 

astonishment wc stood rooted to the spot in indescribable emotion. 
There needed no inquiry to learn what they were, though wc had 
no idea that such a pleasure awaited us before we reached Munich — 
the magnificent features of that glorious mountain region were not 
for a moment to be mistaken. The feeling they inspired was too 
peculiar and exciting to be ever again effaced. Those proud moun- 
tains, with their eternal peaks and eternal snows, and about which 
so much of the sublimity of nature and of history hangs; over 
which so many of the great spirits and rulers of the world have 
wandered; on whicli the noblest poetry of the noblest human souls 
has been poured in wonder, and deep homage, and glowing with 
words fused into the richest eloquence by the fervour of intensest 
emotions; how clear, how delicate, as if carved in mother-of-pearl, 
and yet how solemn and mysterious they lay. It seemed almost 
too much to believe that thus in a moment, and without a moment's 
anticipation, that grand region of European history and sublimity 
had thus spread itself out before us. Those vast Alpine masses, 
those glittering peaks and glaciers, which, not only the lights and 
shades, the tempests and the silent sunshine of ages, but the spirits 
of Hannibal, of Csesar, of Napoleon, of Tell, of Hofer, of Milton, 
Byron, and Shelley, of Rousseau and Coleridge, and millions of 
brave hearts and worshiping souls, have arrayed in an evergrowing 
interest, and have stood as the very ramparts of poetry and liberty 
in the eyes of all Europe. 

At this moment we could not be less than sixty English miles 
from the nearest point of this great mountain range, and more than 
twice that distance from some of the chief peaks which were visible, 
for we were assured that almost every peak of greatest note 
might be hence discerned; the Jungfrau, Mont Blanc, and even 
St. Gothard. Be that as it may, the distinctness with which they 
lay in the transparent blue sky was wonderful. It was not that 
they seemed near, for there was a feeling of their remoteness about 
them, a brooding spirit of dream-like silence shrouding them. 
They filled the whole vast range of the south-western sky, in the 
very extremities of which you could discover their white and ivory- 
like fronts, dimly and sublimely reared; but their feet were lost 
in the obscurity of the far distance. They seemed to rise, as it 
were, out of a shadowy gulf, in mysterious contrast with their clear 

u % 



292 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

sharp wall of frontage, their dreamy peaks here and there raised 
sublimely in the blue ether, their white snowy tracks lying between 
them, and the star-like flashing of glaciers, as the morning sun 
flamed full upon them. 

This magnificent spectacle marked an epoch in our lives: it 
was the first glimpse we had seen of the Alps, and the peculiar and 
indescribable feeling which it excited continued with us for days, 
and still comes back on reflection with an imperishable poetic effect. 
It was as if we had suddenly had a peep into the mountain-land of 
heaven, or as if one of the planets had at once swept near the 
earth, giving us a view of its strange and unapproachable hills. For 
a great part of the forenoon our way lay over a high tract of open 
country, from which this glorious scene became momentarily more 
and more distinct. If we turned our eyes away for a short time to 
the bleak country around us, when we lifted them again this silent 
and magnificent apparition was still there, stretching like a divine 
and unearthly dream along the southern sky. 

But anon we descended into lower regions, where these noble 
objects of contemplation were for hours together shut out, and 
scenes of another and not less strange, but of a humiliating kind 
forced themselves upon us. We were fast approaching Bavaria. 
We were already in a Catholic country, and beggars and wayside 
shrines became every moment more abundant. Wayside shrines ! 
How beautiful, how poetical ! how full of a thousand holy and 
traditional charms would these words have struck upon our ears in 
England ! They would have brought all the pious and picturesque 
Middle Ages before us. The pilgrim, dusty and travel-worn, halt- 
ing before them, and putting up his heartfelt orisons and thanks- 
givings. The proud baron and his train, doffing their caps and 
bowing lowly, as they rode to battle or the chase. The stately 
cavalcade going in merry pilgrimage to some distant famous shrine, 
crossing themselves and uttering a prayer as they went by; and 
the poor and weeping countrywoman, with a heart bowed down 
with a mountain of sorrow, here kneeling and softening the very 
stones with her tears, and calling in the eloquence of a wrung 
heart on the Mother of God for her tenderest intercession. How 
naturally will all such as have not witnessed the reality of these 
wayside shrines thus feel and think; and how lamentably different is 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. £98 

the truth. Not that the poor creatures for whom these things are 
so plentifully provided, do not thus use them ; do not thus bow 
and pray before them; do not often feel such needs and make such 
appeals ; but the things themselves, and the ignorance by which 
at the present day they are made requisite, how revolting are both ! 

It seems as if superstition itself had been purposely caricatured, 
and the very worst aspect given to the worst features of it, to make 
it loathsome. As if the rites and physical resources of the Catholic 
church had been pm*posely disfigured, degraded, and made hideous, 
in order to wean the wretched votaries from them. But this has 
been done with a deeper insight into the nature of ignorance than 
those possess who have not had so much occasion to study it, and 
the consequence has been such as fully to justify the cunning of 
the church; and this in a land where Luther and Melancthon arose, 
and where the light of Protestantism has been cast strong and 
wide by thousands of brave hearts and masculine minds, was more 
than we expected. 

All these shrines, crosses, and images of saints, which crowd 
the bridges and waysides in Catholic Germany, have something 
especially ugly and disgusting about them. One would have 
thought at least that they would have been made attractive to the 
imagination by some degree of art and beauty; and attractive they 
are made, though not by beauty ; but by a different quality, and 
a principle well understood by the church which employs it. Their 
principle of attraction is that of ghastliness and bloodiness — the 
principle which irresistibly draws the ignorant and superstitious 
mind, and that which has been employed by Paganism, the step- 
mother of Catholicism, in all ages, and which yet compels so many 
victims to the temple of Juggernaut. In the very face of the Alps, 
in the presence of the sublimest features of holy nature, before the 
handiworks of God's greatness and the beauty of his poetic reve- 
lations of himself in mountain and overarching heaven, they have 
dared to set up their most impudent forgeries of divinity in bare- 
ness and distortion, and have succeeded, strong in their knowledge 
of poor human nature. The holiest personages are here depicted 
in these profane and disgusting forms, which nothing but a false 
religion dare to attempt, and all that is intellectual and refined in 
Christianity is commonised and imbruted. Wayside crosses you 



294 



CHARACTERISTICS OF 



see in all parts of Germany, but in the more Protestant parts with 
some regard to art and elegance; but as you approach Bavaria, 
these crosses tower up into lofty slender beams of wood, generally 

with two crosses on each. On the slender 
stem are painted or carved all the instru- 
ments of Christ's torture; the nails, the 
hammer, the pincers, the spear, the scourge, 
and even the sponge and reed. In the 
centre of the highest cross is often depicted 
the Almighty with a taper crown, and his 
robes spread out downwards, so as to present 
a fanciful figure of a triangle, and thus a 
'-' symbol of the Trinity. On the lower cross 
is the figure of the Saviour, generally of a 
■r~ most ghastly kind, with streams of red 
1_ paint, for gore, running down his face in 
\ great drops, down his side, and from his 
feet. Some way lower down on the post 
is nailed an image of the Virgin, generally 
on a thin board or piece of sheet-iron 
painted. Wherever you look, on almost 
every bare hill top, stands one of these 
dismal crosses, looking high and dark, like 
so many gallows; and besides these, every 
few hundred yards you come to a saint or a shrine. 

These shrines are generally built of brick or stone, rudely; 
have often been plastered over, and the plaster is falling off, from 
the weather. They have generally a heavy and neglected look. In 
front they have a large niche, often a space amounting to a little 
chapel, in which sometimes is a painting of the Crucifixion, done 
in the most flaring sign-painting style and colours, and with plenty 
of representations of blood and ghastliness. Often there are 
pictures of the Almighty and the Virgin. In others there are 
images of Christ, sometimes lying on the mother's lap, as taken 
from the cross, bloody and haggard. In others a skeleton-like 
figure is lying, with every rib shewing strongly through the tight 
skin, and with shriveled limbs, to represent Christ lying in the 
sepulchre* In others he hangs on the cross, with the customary 




GERMAN ('TTTES AND SCENERY. 



295 



streams of gore from face and feet, and a great iron wire of nearly 
half an inch thick hanging from his side to the ground, and 
painted with red-lead to represent a stream of blood. In others 
stands a yellow half-starved saint in chains, with the most unshorn 
and villanous look imaginable. These figures and paintings are 
of all sizes, from that of life to that of dolls, according to the size 
of the shrine, some of which are not larger than a beehive set on 
a post of two or three feet high. Some of them containing pictures 
in flaming colours, some which are scarcely discernible from age 
and weather. The only poetical things about them, are the offer- 
ings of flowers which the peasants make. 

But nothing is too wretched or mean to serve for one of these 
shrines and idols. As the Indian will worship devoutly a chip on 
which a few words are writ- 
ten, or the African an old 
anchor thrown up by the 
sea from some wreck, so 
these poor creatures stick 
up, in some of these little 
shrines, a paltry picture on 
a bit of paper, or a little 
paltry image in staring red 
and yellow, bought of a 
wandering Italian. These 
shrines are mostly guarded 
in front with gratings of 
iron-wire or iron-bars, and 
look vastly like meat-safes, 
and are really more bloody 
than many butchers' shops. 
The degrading and vul- 
garizing of all that is ideal 
and beautiful in Christianity ft***** 1 : 
is beyond conception; and nothing can so forcibly demonstrate 
the low grade of taste and intelligence of the peasantry of Bavaria 
as the veneration which they testify for these foul abortions of 
a wretched superstition. There are saints at every turn; Saint 
Nepomoks on every bridge; and holy, beggarly helpers in every 




296 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

spot of the slightest danger. Where there is a steep road, stands 
some paltry shrine, with a paltry picture, in which a group of 
queer figures are on their knees to a saint for the safety of wagons 
and carts; and a rude sketch of one of these useful vehicles 
is displayed in the picture. Where there is a rapid current in a 
river, on the bank stands a shrine, with a picture of a boat, and 
a similar group praying for the safety of boats to a saint. In a 
wood, is one with robbers falling on travellers, and people praying 
to the saint for the safety of travellers. The poor people, instead 
of being taught in all difficulties to trust in the one universal 
God, to thank him for his fatherly protection, and to take courage, 
are everywhere taught to look to wretched objects in wood, or 
paint, or plaster, which are greatly in need of help and repair 
themselves. 

But this is not all. On almost every house-front are little 
niches with similar figures, or paintings of the same, on the 
plaster. The Almighty and the Virgin spread out their triangular 
figures on shutters and on signs. The Virgin, with that species of 
superstitious profanity which distinguished the mysteries of the 
Middle Ages, not unfrequently figures as the recommendation of a 
public-house; the Gasthaus zur heiligen Maria. In the chinches 
abound all the same ghastliness of figures, bloodiness of decoration, 
and paltriness of taste. 

At Ehingen, where we dined, we walked into the church, 
and were quite astonished at its great size and character for so 
small a place. But it stands in the midst of a very Catholic 
district, and the pilgrimage banners which stood in it before 
different shrines, shewed that it was a great centre of religious 
resort. This church was large enough for a minster, and surprisingly 
handsome. The ceiling was slightly concave, and painted with 
large designs in fresco, of Scripture subjects. These designs were 
enclosed in framework of arabesque-bordering in plaster of singu- 
larly elegant forms, the designs being extremely bold and beautiful. 
Besides the main altar-piece at the east end, with its large painting 
and showy ornaments, round the spacious body of the church 
stood other ten altars, in recesses, with their paintings, images, 
and banners, and other embellishments. The whole was so stately 
and so superior that it would have done honour to a great city; 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 297 

but when you came to look closely at the images on the different 
shrines, you were again disgusted with the striking exhibition of 
blood and bad taste. There was the iron blood-coloured wire from 
the side, this fictitious stream of gore, falling on a bare skull, and 
other such horrors; while again, equally revolting, because it was 
ludicrous, was a Christ sitting above one altar, in a recess, with 
his gore-dripping crown of thorns, yet looking very comfortable, 
with one leg crossed on his knee. 

As we issued from this very Catholic town there was a com- 
plete row of these shrines again; a burial-ground full of the same 
trumpery, and troops of beggars of the most horrid description. 
The exhibition of beggars on the borders and on the roads of 
Bavaria, is beyond what I ever saw anywhere, and must be almost 
a match for Italy itself. They seemed to have collected from far 
and wide to the highways, and were objects so disgusting that you 
were glad to relieve them to be rid of their presence. Some without 
eyes, others without noses, others with the hideous stump of a 
hand, which they thrust in at the carriage window. How one 
country could be supplied by the curse of heaven with objects so 
revolting, was astonishing, and seemed to amount almost to a 
miracle. Strong in their loathsome deformity, their dogged impor- 
tunity was invincible. Grasping the edge of the open carriage 
window with one huge hand, and thrusting their disgusting mala- 
dies as much as possible before you, they clung fast, and kept up 
an incessant whining supplication as the carriage went on. They 
had always the cunning to station themselves on the slope of a 
hill, where they knew that German drivers never proceed at more 
than a foot's pace, either up or down, and where you consequently 
are at their mercy. If the windows were closed it was the same. 
You heard a hollow murmuring begin. If the fellow could contrive 
to thrust in his face or finger anywhere, he was sure to do it; 
whether he could or not, the hollow whining went on till you or 
your driver dropped something to the inexorable leech. Protestant 
Germany has no nuisance like this. The occasional begging, or 
fighting their way, as they call it, of the handworker, or a peasant 
woman, has something healthy and modest about it, and is most 
tolerable in comparison. 

But a much more agreeable object greeted our eyes near this 



298 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Ehingen. It was the Danube! It was no common day on which, 
for the first time in your life, you saw the Alps aud the Danube. 
The Danube here was truly but in its infancy; or, as we might 
say, in its boyhood; for it rises some fifty or sixty English miles 
higher at Donau-Eschingen. But the moment we saw it we were 
struck with it. Though not larger than what you would call a 
rivulet, yet it went winding on with a rapidity, and at every turn 
became so much augmented, that it seemed to carry in its air a 
consciousness of future greatness. It had the vigour and life of a 
young giant about it; or you might imagine it the tail of a mighty 
serpent, whose body stretched itself over vast lands, whose head 
was in distant regions, but whose immensity and power were indi- 
cated by the very motion of its extremity. There was something 
sublime in the idea of the far countries through which this noble 
river ran to pour itself from its broad mouth into the Black Sea. 
How wonderfully had grown this young river as we crossed it 
again at Ulm; how lordly was it become when we afterwards found 
it once more at Linz, in Austria, and sailed on its waters to 
Vienna, where we bade it good speed on its magnificent journey 
to Constantinople. 

The costumes of the peasantry, and in particular the head- 
dresses of the women working in the fields in this district, attracted 
very much our attention. Every little neighbourhood seemed to 
have a different one. In one place appeared the singular cap of 
lace and gold, called a Gimpel Haube, which looks like an expanded 
turkey-cock's tail. These are very expensive, costing often as much 
as three louis-d'or. A more general one was that of a handker- 
chief thrown over the head in a particular form, and tied under the 
chin with long ends. In one place, these were all red; in another, 
bright yellow; in a third, black or white, and had a good effect in 
groups in the fields. 

Evening saw us at tea in the large old inn Zum Schwartzen 
Ochs, in the picturesque old town of Ulm, the boundary town of 
vViirtcmbcrg, and overlooking the great plain of Bavaria. A very 
interesting city is Ulm, of about 16,000 inhabitants; once a free 
city of the empire, and a place of great spirit and trade. Like 
Augsburg, a city of wealthy weavers formerly; it is now one of the 
most venerable and picturesque towns in Germany. The figure 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 290 

which it has cut in different periods of German history connects 
with it many striking associations. It was here that the chiefs of 
the Swabian Band assembled to march against Ulric of Wurtem- 
berg; and in the broad meadows on the banks of the Danube, 
tradition points out the scene of the meeting of the Confederate 
Generals. But as in visiting Scotland we are more powerfully 
drawn to the scenes made so interesting by Walter Scott, so in 
Ulm we look more eagerly for those rendered conspicuous by Hauff 
in his story of Lichstenstein than those belonging to history alone. 
It was thus that we sought out the venerable old Rathhaus, covered 
with remains of ancient frescoes; for the Erker-fenster, the oriel 
window where stood the two young damsels, Marie von Lichsten- 
stein and Bertha von Besserer, to watch the entrance of the chiefs 
of the Band. In the square before the old Rathhaus is one of the 
handsomest brunnens in Germany, newly restored, with a figure 
of a youthful knight bronzed and gilt, of the most exquisite 
workmanship. 

But the glory of Ulm is not in its old Rathhaus, or other 
houses and streets of old-fashioned picturesque effect, nor its great 
trade in edible snails, — but its minster. This, and especially its 
western front, is a glorious object. It is a monument of the art of 
the fifteenth century which might be visited and studied daily for 
months with undiminished pleasure. Murray, in his otherwise so 
generally correct and valuable Hand-Book, has by some one, who 
has read the printed account of this church, but was not much 
acquainted with the language, been led into a very erroneous 
account of it. He says it exceeds in dimensions any other church 
in Germany. It only exceeds that of St. Stephan at Vienna and 
that of Strassburg, not those of Cologne and Speier. Its extreme 
dimensions are 485 feet long, and 200 feet wide. It contains only 
57,639 superficial feet, Paris measure, while Cologne minster con- 
tains 69,400, and Speier 69,350. He says the architect was 
Matthew Ensinger. The real architect is not known. It has been 
supposed to be Ulrich Ensingen, a member of a celebrated family 
of architects of Uichtlande, in the canton Freyburg in Switzer- 
land, of which this Matthaus Ensingen mentioned by Murray was 
another. No stone about this fabric records the builder's name; 
but a contract was made with Ulrich Ensingen as builder in 1790; 



oUO CHARACTERISTICS OF 

and as the building commenced in 1777, it is still doubtful who 
was the original designer and architect. Three, or four architects in 
succession superintended its progress, of whom Matthaus Ensingen 
was an after one. The building was 130 years in progress, of 
which 117 were required to bring the tower to its present height. 
At this period, while the people were at worship at noon, two 
stones fell from the arch under the main tower. The people fled 
out of the church in consternation. It was expected the whole 
tower would fall, and the then builder took to flight. On examina- 
tion, however, the cause was obvious, — -the insufficiency of the 
arches under the tower to bear its enormous weight. They were 
underbuilt, and the tower stood firm; but it was never ventured to 
complete the original design, that of carrying the tower to the 
height of 500 feet, terminating in a beautiful crocketed spire, of 
which the plan is extant. It is now only 237 feet high. On the 
parapet, Murray tells you there is a tablet informing you that the 
Emperor Maximilian once stood upon it on one foot, balancing on 
the other in the air a wheel. There is a Latin inscription, saying 
that he stood on one foot, wheeling his other in the air : but the 
chronicler, Crusius Schwab, tells a very different story. He says, 
when those who ascended the tower with the Emperor told him, on 
proposing to do this feat, the danger of it, he said : " Mir nicht, 
ich meines Orts wollte die ganze Welt nicht nehmen, dass ich mich 
in eine solche Gefahr begeben." That is — There is no danger 
to me, for I would not for the whole world place myself in such 
danger. 

The history of the origin and progress of this building is very 
interesting. The citizens determined to build it entirely out of their 
own resources, and not only did not apply for, but rejected all the 
usual means of raising such structures by papal acts and licences. 
The Burgermeister Ludvvig Krafft, when he had laid the first 
stone, accompanied by the nobles and gentry of the city, by a pro- 
cession of youths and maidens, and a band of music, drew out his 
purse, and laid on the stone 100 gold gulden. His example was 
eagerly followed by the other nobles and gentlemen; all, great and 
small, rushed down one after another to the foundation to deposit 
their offerings, whence so much accrued that it enabled the building 
for a long time to go on. A hut was erected near, to which all 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 301 

who wished to contribute daily carried money, jewels, bracelets, 
rings, gold and silver articles, etc.; and as the walls arose, dishes 
were set in the church, into which offerings were thrown. Work- 
men came far and near to Ulm, offering to labour for a certain 
period gratis; farmers and peasants came pouring in with their 
wagons to convey materials; and this and that guild, rich family, 
or rich person, undertook to complete a certain part at his or 
their own expense. Thus, for near a century and a half, was kept 
alive this patriotic fire; and besides all the gratuitous labour and 
material, were expended on it 900,000 florins, a vast sum for 
those days. 

The light and graceful architecture is most beautiful. The 
western portal, consisting of three pointed arches with their corres- 
ponding pillars and canopies, the central arch being forty-five feet 
high, forms a porch of sixteen feet deep. The pillars are clustered 
and filled with niches, all furnished with images; the back and sides 
of the porch the same. The whole is one of the most perfect and 
glorious things of the kind in the world, and the whole tower is 
of correspondent proportion and perfection. Its great windows, 
pillars, bands, tracery, buttresses, and all its ornaments, are most 
exquisite, whether surveyed in the whole or in detail, and had the 
tower been finished it would perhaps have had no rival in Europe. 
At the back of the porch is a curious history in old alto-relievo 
figures, brought from an older church, which they had pulled down 
for the occasion. It consists chiefly of a representation of the 
creation of the world. There is the Almighty, as a venerable old 
man, Adam and Eve, and particularly the Lord scolding them for 
eating the apples, and afterwards bringing them clothes, where he 
is in the act of putting over the head of Eve a new chemise. In 
the transept porches are similar old figures. The south porch also 
has a curious representation of the origin of arches. Its arch is 
represented as a tree, with its boughs rudely lopped off and bent 
archwise, as you might suppose such a thing to be in one of the old 
wooden churches of the earliest Christian ages. 

Before the Reformation, this great minster was most gorgeously 
and wealthily fitted up internally. It had no less than fifty-one 
altars ranging round the main body of the church, with all their 
rich accompaniments. These are now all cleared away: but the 



302 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

pulpit and its lofty carved canopy; the stalls of the choir, ornamented 
with heads of almost all the celebrated characters of antiquity, 
Greek, Roman or Hebrew; the tabernacle in the choir; the chapels 
of the Von Besserers, the Neithardts, etc., with all their carving, 
images, paintings, and emblazoned windows, are still splendid 
testimonies of the zeal and talent with which the native artists, 
Syrlin and others, attracted hither by the fame of the work, 
emulated each other in this great temple of the city. The sculptors 
and carvers, Jbrg Syrlin, father and son; the glass-painters, Hans 
Wild and Cramer; the organ-builders, Schot and Schneider, and 
Konrad Rottenburgher, a barefooted monk; Wassermann, the 
image-founder, with the painters Moosbruker, Schaffner, and other 
artists, have yet evidences of their genius here remaining, perhaps 
unsurpassed by any in Germany. In the sacristy too may still be 
seen a figure of Christ the size of life, seated on an ass on wheels, 
as it used to go round the city in the procession on Palm Sunday. 
The cathedral yard is shaded with venerable lime trees, planted, it 
is said, in 1699. 

Crossing the bridge on our way to Augsburg, we were reminded 
that we had entered Bavaria by the police officer issuing from his 
bureau to examine and sign our passport. In leaving the little 
kingdom of Wurtemberg we could not avoid paying it the tribute 
of our regret. A more pleasant, flourishing, contented country we 
never saw. The king is popular; the people active, cheerful, 
healthy, and good-hearted. The scenery, if not on a grand scale, 
is in many parts very beautiful, and everywhere inspiring a feeling 
of general happiness and comfort. 

The great plains of Bavaria now lay before us. To our left ran 
the Danube, with its peculiar boats with their broad yellow and 
black stripe, the Austrian colours. To our left lay the Field of 
Blenheim, and far out before us, corn-fields, pine-woods, shrines 
numberless, churches with a one simple form of peaked tower, and 
beggars in abundance. We dined at a good country inn, Die 
Krone, at Burgau, where the innkeeper's family were the only 
Protestants in the village, and talked with various of the peasantry, 
who seemed much poorer, and much worse informed than those of 
Wiirtcmbcrg. As we drew near Augsburg, the perfect flatness of 
the country became a matter of surprise. In the immediate neigh- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 303 

bourhood of the city, wc at first imagined it must have been 
rendered so by art; the whole was as truly level as a bowling- 
green. 

AUGSBURG. 

The famous old city of Augsburg makes an imposing appear- 
ance, with its various towers and steeples overlooking its suburban 
villages and gardens as you approach. Long public walks extend 
along the road-sides into the country, and numbers of people, 
walking and driving, announce a place of consequence. You pass 
over the old moat, and behold the strength of its gates and walls, 
its ancient ditches, now planted and converted into a public prome- 
nade; and with water from the river or rivers, for the Lech and 
Wertach unite here, streaming through them. You feel how much 
the wealth and independence of Augsburg in past times, for it was 
a free city of the empire till Napoleon added it to Bavaria, demanded 
strong watch and ward, and the police officer issuing from his lodge 
on the drawbridge and demanding the delivery of your passport, 
impresses you with a feeling that you are even now in the hands of 
a strict and cautious government. The formality, however, is mere 
formality; the police are very civil, and your passport ready signed, 
is, without your trouble, handed to you at your inn the next morn- 
ing, unless you are going to make a considerable stay in the place. 

As you proceed into the city, you are more struck with its 
aspect. It is indeed, one of the handsomest, most substantial, and 
wealthy-looking cities of Germany. The Maximilian Strasse is 
justly celebrated for its extent, breadth, and imposing character, with 
its three bronze fountains, large and tasteful, and its lofty, clean, 
bright, and palace-like houses. It is, in fact, one of the finest 
streets in Europe. You feel that these abodes must be those of 
wealthy people; and indeed Augsburg is now as famous for its 
millionaire bankers and brokers, as it formerly was for its diets and 
weavers. The farther you penetrate into the city, right and left, 
the more you see evidences of its ancient importance, when its 
weavers were also merchants trading to the east and to the west, 
and supplying Europe with spices, gold, precious stones, silks, 
ivory, etc. When its merchants became nobles, they entertained 
emperors, and their daughters married the sons of emperors. On 
all sides are old churches and chapels, towers and bastions, orphan- 



304 CHARACTEEISTICS OF 

houses, convents and monasteries, Burger -hospitals, and many other 
institutions of support and instruction, both Catholic and Protes- 
tant; the Catholic Brothers' Pfriinde, or beneficiary-house; the 
Protestant college, the evangelical orphan-house, the evangelical 
poor children's house, the Catholic orphan-house and poor children's 
house, the general sick-house; the religious institution, endowed 
for the education of English young ladies by a certain Boinz de 
Acton Ireton, of the princely family of the Earls of Torky, probably 
Torkay, still ably maintained, and furnishing excellent lady teachers 
for the higher as well as for the female Folks' schools; the Incurable, 
or sick-place of St. Gervatius, etc. etc. 

Surely never was a city of the same extent so nobly endowed 
with institutions for the protection of the young and old, of the 
deserted and infirm. Amongst the benefactors are conspicuous 
the great Fugger family ; and in the lower part of the city you 
find a part called the Fuggerei, which consists of a hundred small 
houses for the residence, at a low rate, of the poor. In another 
part you find a street called after the celebrated weaver's daughter, 
Phillipina Welser, the romantic story of whose marriage with the 
son of the Emperor Ferdinand I. is known to most people. The 
house in this street where she is said to have been born, is also 
pointed out, but must have been modernised since those days. 

In the lower part of the town you find streets as wretched and 
crowded as the others are grand and airy. Old mills there are 
working away, their huge wheels driven by a river which is con- 
veyed roaring under houses and streets, and here and there shews 
itself, foaming and raging impetuously. The fish-market is a 
singular scene, what with the curious costumes often to be seen 
in it, and the articles of food there offered for sale — fish, frogs, 
snails, and venison. 

The Bath, or Ding-Haus, in the Maximilian Strasse, which 
was, in fact, the parliament house of the city while it was free, is 
one of the chief lions of the place. It is a vast building, erected 
by the native architect Elias II oil, and abounds in old wainscot, 
old tapestry, statues of no great value, and stoves enormous. Der 
Goldene Saal, or Golden Hall, the council chamber, is the boast of 
Augsburg. It is 110 feet long, 58 wide, 52 high, and has 52 
windows, three rows in height. Its floor is composed of 2800 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 305 

pieces of white, red, and blue marble. Its ceiling has no visible 
beam, and is covered with allegorical frescoes; the walls with 
wainscot, gilding, and bronze busts of Roman emperors. But 
there is nothing more curious in the city than the old cathedral, 
the Weber Haus, and the inn of Die Drei Mohren. 

The cathedral is a most ancient -looking church; and claims so 
early a date for its foundations as 312, and for the main part of 
the present fabric as 994. Its bronze gates in the north porch 
are said to have been cast in 1072, and are covered with quaint 
figures of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Serpent tempting them; 
centaurs, and other ancient oddities. The south porch dates 1336, 
and has its pillars, arches, etc. covered with whole histories of the 
Virgin, of Jesus, with all their ancestors, according to St. Matthew; 
apostles, prophets, and saints — a most grim and antique assembly. 
The whole church has the same ancient air. It is crowded with 
chapels, shrines, paintings, bass-relievos; again from the history of 
Christ and the Virgin; carvings in wood, tombs of many very old 
bishops, with enshrined skeletons, relics, and all such things, which 
wonderfully rivet the veneration of the people. The doors gene- 
rally stand open, and it is curious to see the numbers of people 
that are continually kneeling at one shrine or another. The 
country people, as they return from market, seem regularly in the 
practice of going through this church to take a new stock of holi- 
ness home with them, as they have taken their stock of milk, or 
vegetables, or frogs, or snails to the market; and you see the most 
singular costumes as well as solemnly worshiping faces here. On 
the outside, too, is a sort of niche at the foot of the church wall, 
representing a sepulchre, with a figure of the dead Christ in it; 
and of course, round this you often see most devotional kneelers, 
and many flowers scattered. 

The Weberzunft Haus, or Guild-house of the weavers, is a 
singular and most characteristic building. It is connected with 
the rise and prosperity of the trade of Augsburg, and was the 
resort of those great merchant princes, the Fuggers, the Welsers, 
and others, who stretched their enterprises east and west, to India 
and America. It still remains in all its antique dinginess. On 
the outside you see faded traces of its once splendid frescoes, the 
work of Matthaus Kagcr. You can see stately horses and their 

x 



306 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

riders in procession through grand streets, and the inhabitants 
crowding to roof and window to behold them. Still plainer are 
the figures of the celebrated Anton Fugger, the founder of the 
trade of Augsburg with America and the West Indies; an American 
Indian; an Asiatic; and a patriarch of the Greek church, with the 
last of whom he is making those arrangements which were so 
auspicious to the flourishing of trade and of the Greek literature. 
The great Ungarn Schlacht, or Battle of the Huns in 955, which 
is said to have been very splendid, is now scarcely visible, but 
a master builder, supposed to be Elias Holl, his wife, and two 
children, are represented as looking out of a window, and are 
admirably natural and lively heads. There are also snatches of 
very droll scenes; as boys laughing at a dog in spectacles, and 
such like. 

Internally, the Weber Haus presents one of the most singular 
scenes imaginable. It is heavy and dark. The lower part is a 
sort of mart of cloth, where different master-weavers are busy, sur- 
rounded by heaps and bales of their stuff, and numbers of peasants 
in their costumes, men and women, some of them out of obscure 
places in the country, the oddest of figures, are purchasing. The 
cellars are also occupied with the weavers and their wares ; and 
over their little windows looking into the streets, they have signs 
on which are painted patterns of chequered cloths. The staircase 
leading to the upper story is wide, heavy, and dingy. There is 
the room where the cloth is measured off before a master, and the 
leathern cushions on which it is stamped. On the walls are written 
many pious verses in heavy German text. There is an adjoining 
room, the former Amtstube, or place of official meeting. In this 
are kept a piece of linen woven by Conrad Fugger in 1446; a 
silver gilt cup, given by the general trade members to the guild, 
with other cups, and amongst them one of cocoa-nut set in silver, 
a gift of St. Ulrich, to the guild. There are the banners of the 
guild ; and on the walls are displayed the coats of arms of all the 
great weavers, besides portraits of heroes, ancient and modern, 
kings and emperors, with their names, and choice Bible histories, 
done by Peter Kaltenhofer. The master-weavers once amounted 
to 3000, but now to little more than 200, employing about 400 
looms. Besides this, let the reader understand that, by ancient 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 307 

privilege, the rest of the house is inhabited and used as a public- 
house, where all comers on business can refresh themselves, and 
drink and smoke, and he may conceive what a strange scene it 
often presents. 

After all, no spot in the city is more interesting than the inn 
which we were at — Die Drei Mohren, or Three Moors, not except- 
ing the castle, in which the citizens read to Charles V. the famous 
Augsburg Confession of Faith. This inn is one of the largest and 
best in Europe. It was originally the palace of the magnificent 
Count Fugger, weaver-merchant, where he entertained Charles V., 
and afterwards consumed in a fire of cinnamon a bond for a million 
of gulden due from the emperor. This celebrated room is now, 
in fact, a lumber room, but it has one of the most superbly carved 
cedar ceilings in the world. For this, the landlord told us, Lord 
Oxford had offered him 6000 gulden (about 500/.), to take it to 
England, which he had refused ; but added, perhaps double that 
sum might tempt him. The apartments are spacious and hand- 
some enough for any palace. Ours were what had been occupied 
by Napoleon when here. But, indeed, all the crowned heads and 
most celebrated statesmen for the last half century engaged in the 
affairs which embroiled or again settled the peace of the Continent, 
seem to have taken up their quarters here, besides numbers of 
other remarkable people. There is a small chapel in the house, 
too, on the altar of which stands a framed letter of the late Pope 
to the landlord, thanking him for civilities shewn him when under 
the heavy hand of Buonaparte. The Fremden Biicher, or Albums, 
kept here for the entry of all arrivals, have accordingly become 
celebrated. They are in constant requisition by the guests, to 
see the many great names they contain ; and we copied from them 
the following as amongst the most curious : 

1804. — Auguste de Kotzebue, Conseiller de S. M. l'Empereur de toutes les 
Russies. 
Madame de Kotzebue, son Epouse. 
1805. — Le Prince Maurice de Lichstenstein, avec tous les Officiers du Regiment, 
Lanciers du Schwarzenberg. Tous marchant a Ulm et vers le Rhine. 
Son Altesse Le Prince Metternich Wurmerbourg, Prince regnant de 

l'Empire. 
S. A. Madame la Princesse de Metternich Wurmerbourg ; et le Prince 
Clement, et la Princesse Pauline les enfants avec M. le Docteur. 

x 2 



308 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

1805. — Sa Majeste, Napoleon le Grand, l'Einpereur de Francais, Roi d'ltalie, 
etc. etc. etc. 
Son Excellence, Monsieur de Talleyrand. 
Deputation du Tribunal de Paris, pour feliciter a Sa Majeste l'Empereur 

Napoleon de ses Victoires, rapportees contre les Autrichiens. 
Deputation du Senat de l'Empereur Francois, pour remettre a Sa Majeste 
l'Empereur Napoleon, l'Address de Felicitations, votee dans la seance 
extraord. du 24 Octobre, par le Senat. 
Cette Deputation que se rendait le 2 Nov. au Quartier- General a Linz, 
retournait au 3 Maures le 3 Nov. rapportant beaucoup des Drapeaux 
conquis, cadeau de Sa Majeste pour le Senat de l'Empire. 
Sa Majeste Josephine, Imperatrice des Francais, etc. etc. etc. avec tous les 

personages de leur Cour. 
Sa Majeste est parti pour Munich pour assister aux Fiancailies de leur Fils 

Eugene Beauharnois avec l'amiable Princesse Auguste de la Baviere. 
Son Altesse Imperiale, Madame le Princesse Caroline de la France, Sceur de 
l'Empereur Napoleon, Epouse du Prince Jerome Mural, avec la Prin- 
cesse leur fille. 
Madame Soult, Epouse du Marechal Soult, avec leur famille. 
1807. — Doctor Gall, Professor der Schadel und Gehirn Lehre, mit Frau und Nichte, 

und Professor Spurzheim. 
1810. — Sa Majeste, Marie Louise, Imperatrice des Francais, Archiduchesse 
d'Autriche, etc. etc. etc. 
Sa Majeste Gustave Adolphe, Roi de Suede, sous le nom de Comte de 
Gottorp, avec deux valets-de-chambre, revenant de la Suisse. 
1814. — Le ties honorable Robert Henry Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, Ministre de 
l'Angleterre, avec ses Secretaires et suite; venant de Paris, allant au 
Congres a Vienne. 
Lord Viscount Cathcart, allant au Congres a Vienne. 
Sir Sidney Smith, avec sa famille, allant au Congres a Vienne. 
The Embassy of his Britannic Majesty, on their way to Vienna, to invest the 
Emperor Francis II. with the Order of the Garter, viz. — Sir Isaac Head, 
Garter King at Arms; Francis Martin, Windsor, Herald at Arms; 
Francis Townsend, gent., Rouge Dragon, Pursuivant ; Mr. George 
Belly, Earl Marshal's Secretary, and Gentleman Usher of the Black 
Rod ; Mr. Wales, Messenger. 
Aug. 17th — Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, knight, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, 
etc., going to invest. — All returned in October. 
Claud James Rich, the Persian Traveller, returning from Babylon. 
1815.— Due de Wellington. 

Jan. 28th (Note by landlord, in his own English). Great honour arrived at the 
beginning of this year to the Three Moors. This illustrious warrior 
whose glorious achievements, which cradled in Asia, have filled Europe 
witli his renown, descended on it. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 309 

His Grace 
Arthur Duke of Wellington, Marquis Douro, Peer of Great Britain, 
Duke of Cuidad Rodrigo, etc., Grandee of Spain of the first class, Duke 
of Vittoria, Marquis of Torres Vedras, and Count Vimeria in Portugal, 
Generalissimo of Great Britain, Ambassador of his Majesty the King of 
England at the Congress of Vienna, etc. etc. 

Accompanied by 
His nephew M. Wellesley, and his Aid-de-Camp, Colonel Freemantlc, 
for Vienna, from Bruxells. His Grace had in his suite four persons. 
Sa Majeste l'Empereur Alexandre de tous les Russies, avec ses Adjutants 
Genereaux et suite. 
1816. — Sa Majeste Gustave Adolphe, ci-devant Roi de Suede. 
Jerome Buonaparte, ci-devant Roi de la Westphalia. 

July James Morier, the Persian Traveller. 

Henry Keppel Richard Craven. 
Sir John Sewell (lawyer). 
Mr. Sotheby, and family. 
Douglas Kinnaird, and Lord Kinnaird. 
The Duke of Devonshire. 
1818.— Sir William Ingelby. 

Lord Stewart Wortley, and family. 
J. W. Agar Ellis. 
Sir Thomas Lawrence. 
1819. — Prince Leopold. 

Lord Londonderry. 
Lord William Bentinck. 
Duke of Bedford. 
1820. — Poulet Thompson, and family. 
1821. — Marquis of Northampton. 
Baring, Lord Ashburton. 
Lord William Russell, and family. 
Le Compte d'Orsay. 
1822.— Duke of Wellington. 
Washington Irving. 
Mr. and Mrs. Sneyd Edgeworth. 
1824. — Lord Leveson Gower. 
1825. — Lord Stanhope. 

Mr. Charles Dilke. 
1827. — William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, etc. 
1828. — Erasmus Darwin. 

Marquis of Lansdowne. 

Mr. and Mrs. Galley Knight. 

Sir William Molesworth. 



310 CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES. 

1S29.— Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lushington. 

Le Chevalier Nicolo Paganini, avec un Secretaire et deux domestiques. 
1832. — The celebrated author of Waverley, Sir Walter Scott, of Abbotsford, baronet, 
accompagne du Mademoiselle sa fille, et de Monsieur Charles Scott, 
attache de la legation historique a Naples, avec courier, une femrae, et 
valet-de-chambre, revenant de Naples a Abbotsford. 
1833.— Mr. G. P. R. James. 
1835 — Captain Basil Hall, and family. 

Lady Davy. 

Mrs. and Miss Trollope, and Mr. Hervieu. 
1836. — Sa Majest6 Othon, Roi de la Greece, et suite. 
1837. — Sir Robert and Lady Peel. 
1838. — Mrs. and Miss Clara Novello. 

1839. — The Right Honorable Henry Goulburn, and family. 
1840. — Lord and Lady Lyndhurst. 
1841.— Maurice O'Connell. 

What a history does even this slight catalogue of people, enter- 
tained in one house, revive in one's mind. Napoleon, the disturber 
of the world; his cunning old minister, Talleyrand; his discarded 
Josephine, and his Austrian empress; his brother, under the character 
of an ex-king, and his conquerors. Now, a deputation hastening 
from France to congratulate him on Germany laid prostrate; now 
one from England to invest his victim, and his father-in-law of 
Austria, with honours for his overthrow. Ministers, again, settling 
the constitution of Europe, who have now passed away by different 
tragic fates; authors, — the most popular and perhaps the most 
wonderful of his age, returning home to die, — painters, musicians, 
dethroned and reigning monarchs; and so many who have already 
ceased to play their parts, and have taken their departure from 
the great inn of this world. 

Two hours by railway, over a perfectly level plain, containing 
more extent of grass land than we had seen at any one time in 
Germany, carried us from the stately and interesting city of Augs- 
burg to 




5. MUNICH. 

Munich has won, in the present age, a distinct name and 
character amongst the German cities, of the most splendid kind, 
which there is no danger of being confounded with that of any 
other. Vienna may be the gay capital of pleasure, the Paris of 
Germany; Dresden, of sober gentility, and of pride in its gallery 
of old paintings; Leipsic, of trade and of books; Prague, of a 
stately eastern dignity; Berlin, if it will, of sand and of rank 
kennels — or, if it prefer it, of its modern assemblage of learned 
professors; Frankfort and Augsburg, of their bankers, and of their 
king-aiding Jews; Cologne, of its Dome and Carnival; Carlsruhe, 
of its profound repose; Stuttgard, of its Danecker, Schiller, and 
its thousands of lightning-conductors; Heidelberg, of its Tun; 
Weimar, of its Goethe; Salzburg, of Mozart, and its mountains; 
and Hanover, of its king and constitution: but Munich is the 
unrivalled queen of modern art in sculpture and painting; and in 
these respects is not only the first city of Germany, but unques- 

/ 



31 £ CHARACTERISTICS OF 

tionably of modern Europe. And this she owes to one man — 
the King. 

It has been, and is much the fashion, and nowhere more so 
than amongst Germans, to decry and ridicule the king of Bavaria. 
According to such persons, he is a bad poet; a man of no real 
taste, but making use of the tastes and talents of other men to 
create himself a name; a man of indifferent character; a monarch 
spending all his resources on works of art and the embellishment 
of his capital, instead of directing his energies to promote agri- 
culture, trade, education, and a hundred other things. I am no 
flatterer of kings and queens; but I must avow I never beheld, 
with more admiration and approval, the works of any man than I 
did those of the king of Bavaria on walking through Munich. I 
will not pretend to say whether it be envy, or whether it be the 
most profound and philosophic taste, which has directed so many 
of the critiques on the king of Bavaria; but this I will say, that 
there is no king of modern times, not excepting Napoleon, who has 
conferred so substantial glory on his capital, or such decisive benefits 
on modern art and taste. Let him be an indifferent poet; and yet 
he is, in my opinion, a better one than many who enjoy a greater 
reputation; and I have read his works. Let him be an indifferent 
king; a neglector of the solid interests of the people, if you will: but 
with all this, he has, from his earliest youth, displayed a taste of 
the most honourable and refined kind; and has done more for the 
fame of his kingdom, the embellishment of his capital, and the 
interests of art, than any king who has ruled over any kingdom 
within the last several centuries, be that kingdom where and how- 
ever great it may; and let his successor but devote himself to more 
ordinary, but not more useful objects of a monarch's attention, to 
the interests of agriculture, or trade, with a zeal as active and 
efficient, and Bavaria will have no reason to complain. The inhabi- 
tants of Munich do not now complain, but far the contrary. They 
see with pride the yearly growing influx of strangers from all parts 
of Europe, and feel that what they there expend is a substantial 
advantage to them. 

It is something for a king to have a decided intellectual taste 
at all. To rouse himself out of that luxurious langour, that fatal 
.sybaritic drowsiness to which his exotic and unnatural education 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 313 

renders him so prone, and actively to devote himself to any one 
object for the good and the fame of his people, is no mean merit. 
No one man is capable of all things, and it is not my business to 
defend his faults as a monarch or as a man; be these what they will, 
let him at least receive praise for his real virtues : for how do the 
bulk of monarchs, however enormous their power and income, pass 
through the world? Unless they are roused to war by a bad ambition 
or a petty interest, they eat, drink, and are forgotten. But here is 
the king of a small realm, and of a capital small and of no dis- 
tinctive character, who devotes his years of peace, his whole income 
and all his energies, to raise his capital to a proud rank of dis- 
tinction and of admiration in the eyes of the world. How does he 
set about it? By the destruction of liberal constitutions? — No; that 
he has left to the Englishman, Ernest of Hanover. By great military 
restlessness, threatening the peace of his neighbours? — No; but by 
crowning it with the distinctions of art. In this pursuit, too, has 
he followed the hackneyed practice of other rulers in other places ? 
Patronised those who now want no patronage ? Run with the crowd 
in the admiration of what is now fixed in the everlasting admiration 
of mankind? Has he collected the precious relics of past sculptors 
and painters? — He has done this; but he has not left the other 
undone, the more daring and original attempt. He has collected 
the living artists about him. He has struck out for himself a new 
track. He has dared to think and act for himself; not contenting 
himself with the very ordinary merit of gathering together that 
which the best judges had pronounced good before him, but judg- 
ing of those works and those workmen who were claimants for 
present and future applause. He has shewn that he was capable 
of discerning real merit. He has sought out and patronised the 
young and aspiring. That is the genuine royal road to honour. 
The patronage of the already established may be safely left to the 
public. The genuine benefactor of art is he who has the eye to 
see it in its living candidates, and the heart to cherish and give it 
wings. He has done this in the most efficient manner. He has 
employed rising artists in many national works, and has made the 
whole public the spectators of their achievements, even by throwing 
open his house as a daily exhibition to the crowd of eager admirers. 
Had the Queen of England, with her immense revenue, done a 



314 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

hundredth part for London what the King of Bavaria, with his king- 
dom of little more than four millions of souls, has done for his 
capital, which before his time was no more than one of our country 
towns, what a jubilee there would have been amongst our host of 
able native artists ! What a spur would have been given to art in 
England. What a taste and emulation would have been created 
amongst our opulent nobility. What miracles of painting and 
sculpture would burst forth from the pregnant but depressed soil 
/ of British genius; and what happiness w r ould have been diffused 
through hundreds of families; what glory w r ould be cast round the 
national name ! 

There wants nothing in England but this warmth of royal 
patronage to start into universal bloom a spring and summer of 
British art such as Europe has not yet witnessed. Englishmen in 
this, as in other directions, have genius and energy enough for 
anything; but there wants the sunshine from above, as well as the 
vigour of soil from beneath, to call forth the growth of national 
talent and glory. The King of Bavaria, with means small, compared 
with those of royalty, or even of nobility in England, has done 
more for art than all Europe put together. With less than what 
kings, nay, than what nobles expend in our country on dinners, 
equipages, routes, and rivalry, he has given to his capital a standing, 
eminent and every way beneficial. He has made it the admiration 
of all Europe for its public works; and more than this, he has 
given an example and an impulse to art, which is now working, 
and will and must work, to the vast advance of modern art, and to 
the great refinement of taste of the whole civilized world. The 
flame of emulation has already spread far and wide. It is this 
very flame which reveals itself in many quarters in the blueness of 
jealous fires. This flame, with a more generous heat, has seized 
on the heart of the King of Prussia. He also has built his 
Glyptothek and Pinacothek, including them in one building, which 
he has planted directly opposite to his palace, as the object, of all 
others, on which he delights to fix his eyes. He has called from 
Munich the great head of its living artists, Cornelius, and set him 
to embellish its colonnade with frescoes. He has collected around 
him from all quarters the most learned professors to adorn his 
capital with their presence, to raise the tone of its society, and to 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 315 

disperse through every office and quarter of his kingdom young 
men instructed by the ablest philosophers, lawyers, and literati of 
Germany. Though no poet himself, he has called to his particular 
companionship the poetical and imaginative Tieck; and has given 
at once to literature and liberty a noble token of his favour by 
calling to him some of the most distinguished of the professors, 
the victims of the King of Hanover's despotism, amongst these the 
brothers Grimm, the collectors of the popular " Kinder und Haus 
M'archen." 

There can be no doubt that this spirit of truly glorious emula- 
tion has grown out of the spirit and achievements of the King of 
Bavaria, and in so flourishing and powerful a kingdom as Prussia- 
must produce distinguished effects. But it is with the liveliest 
feelings of pleasure that I have seen of late this emulative flame 
communicating itself to England; to that England which, for its 
wealth, for its gigantic commerce, its restless and indefatigable 
spirit of enterprise, its conquests on all sides of the globe, its- 
foundation of colonies more immense ancTimportant than any other 
country in any age possessed, its soul of liberty and indefatigable 
labour, is, without hyperbole, the envy and admiration of the world. 
May it spread there, and give that scope for the national genius in 
modern art, which will place our noble country as high in that 
sphere of fame as she is in many others. 

But while it is not true that the King of Bavaria has done 
nothing else for his country, for it in truth owes to him the origin 
of the Zoll-Verein and the existence of the grand canal which now 
runs across Germany and unites the Danube and the Rhine, is it 
not a proud thing for the King of Bavaria that he has given this 
impulse to art? that he has planted this feeling for the great and 
beautiful in the heart of the most influential nations? that he has 
turned the eyes of all artists and lovers of art throughout Europe 
and America upon his little capital? that statesmen begin to con- 
sider how they too may introduce similar tastes and similar works 
amongst their countrymen? that he has, in fact, revived not only 
the beautiful arts by which the ancient Greeks and Romans 
embellished their houses and towns, as yet seen in Herculaneum 
and Pompeii, but has given to architecture and statuary too, as it 
were, a revived existence? 



316 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Those who shall think that any portion of these remarks are 
overdrawn, let them view Munich for themselves. Let them see 
the buildings which the King has raised; the remains of ancient 
art which he has collected; the triumphs of modern art which he 
has achieved; the splendid frescoes with which he has adorned his 
palace in profusion; and the sculpture, painting, and castings in 
bronze, which are going on at this moment, and then will any feeling 
of excess in these remarks speedily be swallowed up in wonder at 
the reality. 

Had the Queen of England raised, out of her private income, 
a building like the Glyptothek; a building, such as we have none in 
London, and filled it with the most exquisitely selected assemblage 
of the finest order of Grecian remains of sculpture; had she done 
this as princess, as the king did as crown-prince, what universal 
applause, and that justly, would have been showered on her. 
What a miracle of fine taste she would have been held. Had we 
heard that, since coming to the throne, she had built but one 
church out of the superfluity of her civil list; that she had not 
only done this in a crowded and poor suburb, where it was greatly 
needed, and that in doing this she had not been contented to build 
it plain and cheap enough for poor folks, but had erected it in 
the purest style of Gothic architecture; that she had caused the 
windows to be painted in a manner rivaling the very glories of the 
old window painting, — how much would be thought and said of it? 
But these are, as it were, but incidental acts of the King of Bavaria. 
The whole city is a monument of his taste and active spirit. The 
palace, itself a glorious epic poem, filled from end to end with the 
richest and most graceful painting from the hands of living masters; 
the theatre; the noble post-office, with its colonnade and classic 
frescoes; the great Ludwig-street, stretching far on, wide, and in 
novel and proud architecture; with its new and superb library, 
its university, its schools, and convents; its church, adorned with 
the last productions of the pencil of Cornelius while here; the 
magnificent Glyptothek and Pinacothek, standing in another suburb 
of the city, like two noble temples of the best ages of Greece, and 
filled with the finest works of ancient and modern art; the public 
arcades round the garden facing the palace, full of fresco scenes 
from Italian landscape and from German history; the grand Isar 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 317 

gateway in the older city, with its Gothic towers and fine frescoes ; 
and all the works going on in the different ateliers of the different 
artists, of Kaulbach, of Schwanthaler, of Stiglmaier; they are, 
in fact, most astonishing, both in their extent and workmanship. 
The sunny, poetical paintings of Kaulbach; his great work in 
progress, the Destruction of Jerusalem; the statues and friezes of 
Schwanthaler, for the Walhalla at Regensburg, — a great national 
temple to the honour of the heroes, both martial and literary, of 
Germany, undertaken by this truly magnificent king; the bronzed 
gilt figures of Bavarian princes for the new throne-room, at the 
foundry of Stiglmaier; and the great figure of the Bavaria, eighty- 
five feet in height, there in progress, intended to be erected on the 
plain near the city, where the people hold their annual feast: these 
things cannot be contemplated without wonder, and make us feel 
as if we were transported to the ages of Grecian genius and marvel- 
lous energy. 

To give a detailed account of the present state and public 
works of Munich would require a separate volume, and a large one. 
I shall not attempt it, but merely take a cursory and admiring 
view of what those who wish to conceive it in its whole merit and 
extent can do by no other means than a journey thither. That 
done, it would require a whole summer of assiduous attention to 
fully familiarize themselves alone with the wonders of art which the 
poet-king of Bavaria has here planned and achieved by his taste 
and zeal. 

Munich has no natural advantages of situation. It is another 
of the German capitals which have, as it were, been thrown down 
by accident. It stands on a thoroughly level plain of vast extent. 
Marshy and wet lands on all sides, and a high though flat position, 
2136 Bavarian feet above the level of the sea, make it subject to 
cold winds from the Alps, and to nervous fevers. What natural 
charms it possesses are the greenness of its meadows, uncommon 
in Germany; its woods, scattered here and there; its rapid river 
Isar; its extensive and finely-wooded gardens; and its views, even 
from some of the city streets, of the distant and glorious Alps. 
The city itself is now extensive: partly traversed by the Isar in 
two or three separate streams, old, dirty, badly paved, and its foot- 
paths, such as they are, crossed every five yards with nasty kennels; 
partly new, beautiful, and imposing. 



318 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

In taking a passing view of the most remarkable objects in 
Munich we will suppose you at the Blaue Trauben, a good inn 
by the city gate leading in from Augsburg. A few hundred yards 
brings you into the Max-Joseph Platz; where you are at once 
struck with the peculiar taste of the king, and the character which 
he has stamped on his city. Turning your back on a row of but 
tolerable houses which forms one side of the square, on your right 
hand is the General Post-Office; on your left, the Palace, and 
before you the Theatre. On everything on which your eye falls 
there is the impression of a rich and classical taste. The post- 
office, an extensive building, is well constructed for the uses of a 
German general post-office, that is, for an office where not only 
the letters, but the parcels are sent; and to which all eilwagens 
run, and where you must procure your post-horses and carriages, 
if you want them. One facade of this great building forms one 
side of the Max-Joseph Platz, and is enriched with a fine colonnade, 
its back wall coloured of a warm ruddy hue, and embellished with 
figures of horse-breakers with their horses, in Herculaneum style, 
in fresco. The theatre is a beautiful Grecian building, with a 
noble portico of eight Corinthian pillars; on the pediment of which 
is a brilliant fresco group of Apollo and the Muses. The facade 
of the palace on the left side of the square is simple, but imposing 
by its extent, being 430 feet long, and 135 high. It is copied in 
its general form from the Pitti Palace in Florence, but differs 
essentially in its details, particularly in its greater height, the 
varied style of its quoinings, and having an open gallery in the 
upper story, as well as in the form of its windows. In the centre 
of the square is a massy monument in bronze of Maximilian 
Joseph I. in a sitting figure, modelled by Rauch of Berlin, and 
cast by Stiglmaier. The whole effect of the square is novel and 
beautiful. It is classical, and yet more brilliant than we are ac- 
customed to see classical structures in England. It introduces you 
to a new style of architectural decoration, that is, new in modern 
times, and prepares you in some degree for what is to follow. 

The palace is now an enormous building, for it includes the 
old palace, which is left standing in the centre, including three or 
four courts, while on each side of it rises a new and more magnifi- 
cent structure. Here rises what is called, Der ncue Konigsbau — 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 319 

the New King's-Buikling, — while on the other side facing the 
Hofgarten rises a still newer, more magnificent, and yet unfinished 
range, called Die neue Residenz, or New Residence, with a mag- 
nificent portico, with statues and splendid frescoes, forming, in 
fact, the real front of the whole palatial mass. 

In these new portions you have a fine assemblage of the 
achievements of the living artists of Munich ; of Von Klenze the 
architect, Schwanthaler the sculptor, and of the principal painters. 
The rooms are all painted, walls and ceilings, by Cornelius, Hess, 
Schnorr, Kaulbach, and many others; with designs of the most 
beautiful conception and character, of the richest colouring, and of 
the most graceful masterly execution. In other palaces you have 
loose paintings hanging on the walls, which are, as it were, part 
of the furniture, and can be removed at pleasure; but here the 
paintings are part and parcel of the palace itself. They give their 
charm and their character essentially to it, and will ages hence 
remain a monument of the royal taste and of the national talent. 
They are virtually a part of Munich, and can belong to no other 
place. Every fresh suite of apartments has its peculiar subject of 
illustration, and combines classical taste with national glory. In 
the lower story you have a series of the most magnificent illustra- 
tions of the old national poem, the Nibelungen Lied, the Iliad of 
Germany. These are the works of Julius Schnorr, in fresco, and 
are glorious productions of modern art. They are intended to 
extend through five rooms, but are not yet complete, the artist 
having been called off to put in progress the still greater works in 
the New Residence. Those, however, which are finished, are grand 
emanations of the poetry of painting. They are of vast size, one 
picture covering one whole large wall. The entrance-hall contains 
a sort of illustrative summary of the origin, the nature, and the 
chief characters of the poem. Over the entrance is the poet sur- 
rounded by the Mahre, the Legends, and the Saga, the Poetic 
Traditions, as the two sources of his song. To the left of the 
entrance are Gunther and Brunhild, to the right Siegfried and 
Chriemhild, the hero and heroine of the poem. Farther right 
follow the grim Hagen von Tronegk, Volker the harper, and 
Dankwardt the marshal. On the same wall above are the dwarf 
Alberich, guardian of the Nibelungen treasures, and Eckewardt the 



320 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

messenger of Chriemhild. On the third wall, Dietrich of Bern and 
Master Hildebrand; farther, King Etzel, or Attila, and his true 
vassal Rudiger. In the arch over the window, Hagen hears from 
the M'ahre of the Danube, the prophecy of the destruction of him- 
self and all his people in Hungary; farther to the right of Etzel, 
are Siegfried's parents, Siegmund and Siegelinde; and finally, the 
queen Ute, Gunther' s mother, with her two younger sons Gemot 
and Giselher the child. On the ceiling are four small paintings, 
the most eventful moments of the poem : the quarrel of Chriemhild 
and Brunhild for precedence in the procession to church; Sieg- 
fried's death ; Chriemhild' s revenge, and Etzel' s lament. 

In the second, or Marriage-hall, are comprehended the most 
important moments of Siegfried's life. Above, on the wall, oppo- 
site to the window, is the first arrival of Siegfried before the palace 
of Gunther in Worms; over this window, the return of Siegfried 
with Chriemhild to his parents. In the lunettes are displayed 
knightly jousts. The great paintings are, Siegfried's return from 
the Saxon war, followed by the captive monarchs Liidiger and 
Liicligast, and saluted by Gunther as conqueror. Opposite, 
Brunhild's arrival in Worms, as the second occasion of grateful 
thanks from Gunther to Siegfried. Opposite to the windows, the 
marriage of Siegfried and Chriemhild; and between the windows, 
the imparting of mysteries from the girdle of Brunhild; and 
thence the bitter quarrel of the queens, and all the succeeding mis- 
fortunes. Besides these, in four smaller paintings over the doors, 
are, a messenger relating to Chriemhild the deeds of Siegfried in 
the Saxon war; Gunther, Siegfried, Hagen, Dankwardt, journeying 
to Isenland; Siegfried and Chriemhild, as the royal pair, in their 
own country; and the same as parents. 

These, as it may be supposed, from the mere bare recital of 
the subjects, are a series of grand pictures, full of all the beauty, 
poetry, and noblest colouring of romance. The figures of the 
youthful heroes; of the lovely and queenly dames; of warriors, 
minstrels, messengers, and miscellaneous characters, are larger 
than life, and all noble of their kind. The landing of Brunhild 
at Worms, in particular, is a piece of the life of the romantic ages 
brought into actual existence before you. The glorious beauty of 
the two rival queens; the manly grace of the young warriors; the 






GERMAN CITIES ANJ) SCENERY. 321 

assembled group of king and courtiers in front; the armed and 
bannered company in the background, beneath the forest trees; 
the stalwart boatman, holding fast the boat as Brunhild steps 
proudly upon land, and seeming to worship the very foot which she 
sets on the earth by him. The whole is a glowing and superb 
scene, such as often has lived in the heart of a young poet, but 
has rarely been thrown forth to the day by the hand of the painter. 
Any one of these scenes would have been enough to have stamped 
the high fame of Julius Schnorr. 

The great characteristics of these modern painters of Munich 
are the living spirit and form of the past ages, which they com- 
municate to their subjects; the warmth and richness of their 
colouring, and their exquisite feeling of beauty in all that they 
paint, whether in nature or in man. For their colouring they are 
indebted to their deep study of the Byzantine school. The bright 
draperies of these old painters; the vivid blues, crimsons, and 
yellows; nay, even the golden backgrounds, they have adopted 
with wonderful success; and, by their masterly skill, instead of 
suffering them to become glaring and gaudy, they have made them 
rich, glowing, and beautiful. They have, in these respects, a life 
and a character peculiarly their own. In their illustrations of 
mythologic subjects, they give us not the cold formality of the 
hackneyed forms with which we are wearied, but they make then- 
scenes and persons live in all their original glory and grace. They 
give us a similar feeling in such subjects as the poetry of Keats, 
Shelley, and Barry Cornwall. In the romantic, they awake all the 
freshness of sensation with which we first read Sir Walter Scott or 
Spenser. They who would feel how they have succeeded in the 
development of personal beauty, may place them in contrast with 
their great antipodes, the powerful but often revolting paintings 
of Rubens, where no sentiment of the ideal of beauty exists ; and 
may, so far as this quality is concerned, even compare them with 
the highest models, Raffaelle, Carlo Dolci, or Correggio. They are, 
however, widely different in their general spirit. They are, in fact, 
masters of their own new and glorious school— embodiers of all 
our finest dreams of poetic romance; and creators of a new and 
most delightful epoch in the history of painting — if what a popular 
traveller says be true. " It has occurred to me as a matter of 



322 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

surprise that no one has thought of forming a gallery, the principle 
of selection being beauty alone: forms and faces such as those of 
Murillo, Titian, or Albano, Correggio, or Da Vinci; landscapes such 
as those of Claude, Breughel, Cuyp, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Van der 
Velde, or Canaletto; no Dutch Boors, even by Ostade or Gerard 
Dow; no harsh-featured old misers nor attenuated saints, though 
by Rembi'andt or Spagnoletto; no martyrdom of holy men, or 
massacres of the Innocents, even if from the workshop of 
Rubens or Caracci. I would have exquisite painting illustrate 
beautiful subjects: it is then that the divine art 'is the most 
divine/ "* 

The second story of this part of the palace, forming a suite of 
seventeen magnificent rooms, is equally embellished by the paint- 
ings of living artists — some in fresco, some in encoustic. The 
first nine, those of the king, with subjects from the Greek; and 
the eight of the queen, with subjects from the German poets. It 
would require a volume itself to go through the details and point 
out the beauties and merits of all these. The first ante-chamber of 
the king is embellished with monochromatic paintings in the style 
of the ancient Greek vases, from the Argonautic expedition, from 
Orpheus, designed by Schwanthaler. The second ante-chamber, 
with scenes from Hesiod, by Schwanthaler, painted by Hilten- 
sperger and Streidel. The service-hall, with splendid scenes from 
the Hymns of Homer, designed by Schnorr, and painted by 
Hiltensperger, Olivier, Streidel, and Schulz. The throne-room, 
from Pindar; the dining-hall, from Anacreon; drawings by Zim- 
mermann; and paintings by Anchiitz and Nilson. The reception- 
room, from the Tragedies of iEschylus, designed by Schwanthaler, 
and painted by Schilger; the king's writing-room, from the Trage- 
dies of Sophocles, by Schwanthaler, painted by Rockel and Hanson; 
dressing-room, from the Comedies of Aristophanes, also Schwan- 
thaler, painted by Hiltensperger; the king's bed-chamber, from 
Theocritus, painted by Rockel, Schulz and Bruckmann, partly from 
their own designs, and partly from those of II. Hess. 

The scenes in the queen's apartments are from Walther von 
der Vogclweide, from the Parcival of Wolfram, two old German 
Minncsangers; from Burger, Klopstock, AVciland, Goethe, Schiller, 

and Tieck. 

* Inglis's Tyrol and Bavaria. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 323 

Nothing but actual seeing can convey any idea of the grace, 
variety, life, and sunny beauty of these paintings. Many of the 
latter are by Kaulbach; with others by Schwind, Lindenschmidt, 
Foltz, Herrmann, Dietz, Wendling, aud Gassen of Coblentz. 
They consist of paintings on the walls, friezes, and designs on the 
ceilings, all accompanied by scrolls, flowers, birds, vases, and such 
embellishments of the most graceful fancy and delightful colouring, 
so chaste, aud yet brilliant. To this magnificent permanent 
gallery — to this glorious poem of a palace — the public is freely 
admitted, on stated days and hours, when the court is there; and 
when absent, nearly every day, at three o'clock in the afternoon. 

But even this portion of the palace and its paintings yield in 
extent and splendour to those of the still newer erection. This is 
intended for the scene of courtly gaiety, on all great and festive 
occasions. Here are six halls, embellished with paintings from 
Homer's Odyssey ; the splendour and interest of which the very 
names indicate, — Mercury sent to the cave of Calypso; Ulysses 
departure thence; his being thrown on the strand of Pheacea when 
Nausicaa the king's daughter is playing there with her maidens 
as their linen dries in the sun; Ulysses in the palace of Alcinous; 
the feast there ; the games ; and Demodocus singing the downfall 
of Troy. 

In the first story we find a ball-room, 130 feet long and fifty 
wide, with basso relievos on the walls; the subjects, Greek dances; 
the painting in the Pompeii style; the colours of the ceiling, 
blue, lilac, scarlet, and gold : the Hall of Beauties, with statues 
of modern female beauties: a banqueting-hall, 53 feet by 58, 
with battle-scenes by Hess, Adam, etc. : a throne-room, 112 
feet long, 85 wide, and 58 high, with a gallery supported by 
twenty statues of white marble. Between these statues are to 
stand the fourteen bronze gilt colossal statues of the Bavarian 
princes, now in the hands of Stiglmaier. This will unques- 
tionably be one of the most splendid throne-rooms in the world ; 
and it is approached by three halls, the walls of which are 
covered with gigantic paintings illustrating the histories of Charle- 
magne, Frederick Barbarossa, and Rudolph of Hapsburg, thus 
connecting the glory of Bavaria with that of all Germany. On 
these great works, equally astonishing by the boldness of their 

y 2 



32-i CHARACTERISTICS OF 

projection and the mastership of their execution, are actively 
employed, Schwanthaler, Stiglmaier, Schnorr, Hess, Jager, Giessen, 
and others. 

But even here you have not done with the wonders and pro- 
fusion of modern art about the palace. Behind it stands the new 
Hof Capelle, a perfect model of the beauties of architecture, 
carving, and painting. The whole walls are lined with the richest 
marbles and mosaic work. The body of the church is divided 
from the aisles by rows of pillars of the finest red Salzburg marble, 
their bases being of white marble, and their capitals gilt. Gold, 
carving, marble, paintings, niches, arches, and inscriptions in Latin 
in antique characters on all sides, meet the eye. Even the back- 
ground of the paintings are of gold, after the old Byzantine style. 
Yet so skilfully is all disposed, that the general effect is not tawdry, 
but admirably rich, the gold ground causing the figures to stand 
forward in bold relief, as in a strong sunshine. The ceilings, side 
arches, altar-pieces, are all covered with paintings by Hess and 
his pupils, representing, in different departments, the history of 
the Chosen Race to the death and glorification of Christ, with 
addition of Catholic features, as the Father, the Holy Ghost, 
the Virgin, Christ deified, and various saints. In one side scene, 
St. George, St. Hubert and his stag, with a little crucifix bound 
between his horns, and all looking up in adoration to Christ, who 
is above, is a most beautiful little pictorial episode from the poetic 
legends of the church. The general effect is as if you were looking 
with a glass of great magnifying power into a splendidly illumi- 
nated missal. 

Hence you may wander to the Ludwig^s Kirche, its paintings 
being the last work of Cornelius before leaving for Berlin : a won- 
derful display of pictorial genius in great scenes of the creation 
of the world, in the latter of which the artist has called in the 
imaginative force of Dante to aid him in this bold and sublime 
design. You may then proceed to the church of Maria Hilf, in 
the Vorstadt Au, already mentioned for its exquisite Gothic archi- 
tecture and its gorgeous windows; and thence to the great basilica 
of St. Bonifacius, finished in 1835, with splendid paintings by 
Hess from the life of the saint, and of the spread of Christianity in 
Germany, and you will then find, that besides many other great 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 325 

fabrics raised by the present king, you have still two to inspect, 
which of themselves alone would have constituted the glory of any 
city, and which have collected into them such treasures of art as 
arc rarely to be found in any two buildings, except in Florence or 
Home. These are the Glyptothek and Pinacothek. 

From the description of these noble fabrics and their contents, 
the pen of the mere visitor shrinks in despair. Volumes only can 
detail their w r ealth ; vision only make palpable their beauty and 
value. The Glyptothek, built by Von Klenze for the present king 
when crown-prince, and at his own cost, was begun in 1816, and 
only completed in 1830. It is of the purest Grecian style, having 
a noble Ionic portico, its pediment embellished by a group of nine 
colossal statues of white marble, Minerva in the midst of the 
plastic arts. The building is a large square, inclosing a court. It 
is apparently only of one story, lighted from above ; and without, 
instead of wdndows, are niches containing statues of the most 
celebrated sculptors. The front is wholly faced with red-and-white 
marble, and in its whole aspect is most chaste and simply noble. 
It contains twelve splendid halls, all floored with marble, and the 
walls lined with scagliola of different and richest colours. Many 
of them are embellished with designs from Cornelius, painted by 
him, Schlotthauer, Zimmermann, and with relievos by Schwan- 
thaler. The mere mass of marble employed here is astonishing. 
Inglis, who saw it when it was scarcely finished, said that he had 
seen the marbles of the Escurial, and others of the most celebrated 
palaces of Europe, but none of them were to be compared with the 
marbles of the Glyptothek. It is, in fact, a worthy abode for the 
treasures of ancient art which it contains, such indeed as no other 
monarch has erected; and the arrangement of those treasures is 
equally admirable and instructive. In twelve halls you have illus- 
trated the rise, progress, decline, and modern revival of the art of 
sculpture. You have first, remains of Indian and Egyptian art; 
then the most ancient Greek and Etruscan ; then the iEgina 
marbles, filling up the period preceding Phidias; then those of the 
very time, and probably from the hand of Phidias' master, the chief 
the colossal Apollo Citharodus ; then, in the Halls of Bacchus and 
of the Niobedse, those of the period of perfect Grecian art. The 
Halls of the Gods and of Troy are appropriated to the frescoes of 



826 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Cornelius, illustrative of the Grecian mythology and the Trojan 
wars. The Hall of Heroes contains statues and busts, Greek and 
Roman, which betray strong symptoms of that decline of art 
which only becomes too prominent in the Roman Hall ; the infe- 
riority of these to the Grecian sculpture striking most forcibly on 
you, after passing from one to the other. To these succeed the 
Hall of Coloured Works, and of the Moderns. 

Amongst the most justly celebrated of this collection are the 
iEgina Marbles. These are fragmentary groups, from the portico 
friezes of a fallen temple in the Isle of iEgina, where they were 
discovered by Baron Haller and others in 1811, and were purchased 
by the king for 6000/., much to the chagrin of the British govern- 
ment, which had sent an order to purchase them for 8000/. They 
fill up an otherwise irremediable vacuum in the progress of Grecian 
art. One group represents the battle of Telamon and Hercules 
with Laomedon, king of Troy; the other, that for the body of 
Patroclus. Part are fighting, part fallen, and display an astonish- 
ing attention to anatomical proportions, but an equal want of 
expression of countenance. In neither form nor face are the soul 
and the predominant character and sentiment or passion of the 
moment expressed, as they are so finely in those of after ages, espe- 
ally in the Venus of Cnidos, the Barberini Faun, and the Kneeling 
Son of Niobe; the last most full of life and expression of all the 
figures which are supposed to belong to the Niobe group at Flo- 
rence. In the Hall of the Moderns, are the Venus and the Paris of 
Canova; the Sandal-binder and the beautiful Vittoria Caldoni of 
Schadow; the bust of Inland, by the father, George Schadow; 
Rauch ; s Admiral Van Tromp; Carli's Winckelmann; and the bust 
of the King as Crown-Prince, by Thorwaldsen ; Thorwaldsen's 
Adonis; Love and the Muse, by Algardi; Napoleon, by Arachi; 
the Kneeling Christ-child, by Algardi, etc. 

The effect of walking through the halls of the Glyptothek is 
indescribably and serenely delightful. The admirable arrangement 
in regard to progressive art, the equally admirable selection of 
subjects, have the most tranquillizing and harmonizing effect on the 
spirit. You are offended or disturbed by none of those mediocre 
objects which in some collections are obtruded on you because they 
are antique. All is pure and chastely beautiful, and full of that 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 327 

peculiarly etkerial and poetic sentiment which lives in the statues 
of the truly great masters. There is an air and spirit of the life of 
gods, a refined and elevated feeling, a divine sentiment about them, 
which calms and raises your own soul. A tender pathos, a sublime 
ideality, a youthful and heroic grace, a profound revelation of the 
divinity of beauty, — in a word, a higher nature, a nobler develop- 
ment of psychological being, draw you into a sympathy with them, 
and make you for the time, and often long after, conscious of a 
more spiritual and generous heart and aspiration than are found in 
you amid the contagion of the ordinary world. I never felt this 
tranquillizing and elevating effect so strongly as in the Glyptothek, 
and should esteem it a peculiar privilege to be able, like the 
inhabitants of Munich, to walk through it at least once a week. 

The Pinacothek, which stands not far distant, a building in the 
Roman style, of great beauty, is equally rich in works of the 
pictorial art, and equally well arranged. It has its nine halls and 
three-and-twenty cabinets, all full of paintings from the earliest 
date to the latest: the old Byzantine, old German, Italian, Nether- 
land, French, Spanish, and from all great masters of each of them. 
It is impossible here to give any idea of the multitudinous contents 
of this great gallery, in which are found all great names, from the 
old church painters Rogier van Brugge, Meister Stephan, Van Eck, 
Mabuse, Taddeo Bartoli, or Spinello, to those of Raffaelle and his 
compeers. Rubens has a whole hall and a cabinet to himself, con- 
taining no less than ninety-five paintings, great and small, under 
his name. But vast and incalculably rich as this great collection 
is, it yet wants to me some grand and cardinal attractions of sweet- 
ness and grace. Some Madonna del Sisto, to which your steps 
naturally direct themselves, as in the Dresden Gallery. Less 
display of the magnificent horrors and savage strength of Rubens; 
of his dowdy women and naked figures rained down in torrents 
from the top to the bottom of the canvass; and of that peculiar 
flesh, which has a tint of decay rather than of health about it, — 
a something which reminds you irresistibly of bad fish. In fact, 
Rubens' most pleasing, and at the same time not least powerful 
works, are not here: such as his grand St. Ignatius Loyola casting 
out Devils, and his St. Francis Xavier preaching to the Indians, in 
the Belvidere Gallery in Vienna. It is an assemblage that fills 



328 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

you with wonder rather than with love. It is a world of miracles of 
art and genius, but somewhat wanting in those soft emotions and 
that divine sentiment which spring up in the charmed quiet of 
the Glyptothek. Not the least delightful and attractive are the 
illustrations of the history of painting, and of striking moments in 
the lives of the great painters by Cornelius, in the five-and-twenty 
Loggie of the Corridor. Here also are 800,000 engravings. 

Besides these splendid temples of art, there are various private 
galleries in Munich; the most excellent, and in every respect most 
valuable one, is that of the Prince of Leuchtenberg, that is, 
Eugene Beauharnois, the son of the Empress Josephine. In this 
you have an admirable selection from the masters of the different 
schools. A considerable number of French, amongst them a very 
interesting full-length of Josephine by Gerard, and Napoleon by 
Appiani. There are also among the statuary, the Eros and Anteros 
of Algardi, the Three Graces and the Magdalen of Canova. 

But leaving galleries and collections, in order to know what 
is doing in Munich, and the wonderful spirit which is working 
there, and has now collected within its walls upwards of 800 artists 
of one kind or other, you must visit the Atelier of the principal 
ones; particularly Kaulbach, Schwanthaler, and Stiglmaier. 

KaulbacVs Atelier we found in the St. Anna Vorstadt, Tatten- 
bacher Strasse, in a large half-neglected building, in a wild neg- 
lected sort of paddock, enclosed with high walls. Here was the 
artist, amid all those objects which render an artist's studio so 
interesting. We entered a large room in which on all sides stood 
the works in progress, and the original sketches of those which 
are completed. Amongst these were many of his first designs for 
his paintings in the palace. We immediately recognised that of 
Faust and Wagner in the Goethe room there. There were various 
portraits painted by him in Italy. A full-length of a fine-looking 
young noble, in the costume of the Middle Ages, in the back- 
ground the beautiful head of a young girl ; a portrait of a young 
artist in a masking costume. But the great object was standing 
opposite to you, his cartoon of the Destruction of Jerusalem, said 
to be purchased by the king, and on which the artist is now actively 
employed. This is of vast size, and the bold genius of the artist 
is at once visible in the characters and actions which it comprc- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 329 

henols. Titus ascends into Jerusalem over its ruins. The eagles 
of the Roman legions are planted on the altar of the temple, the 
abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place ; the high-priests put 
themselves to death with their followers. The Levites with broken 
harps are lying on the floor. Terror and despair seize the women; 
frantic fury the leaders of the people; demons drive the Wander- 
ing Jew with blows and mockery forth to his long pilgrimage 
through the world. Angels conduct the Christians safely out of 
the devoted place; other angels of vengeance descend with Aery 
swords from heaven to execute the long-menaced wrath of God; 
while the five great Prophets of the Old Testament, who have been 
for ages the proclaimers of this judgment, behold from above the 
fulfilment of their words. 

Perhaps if we might venture to suggest a fault in so sublime 
a production, it is a want of a sufficient central point of interest in 
the picture. The attention is drawn here and there, and finds 
distinct groups of striking effect, rather than one undivided whole. 
But this in the completed painting may be corrected. One little 
touch in a subordinate part of the picture is extremely beautiful. 
As the angels escort the Christians forth, the Christian children, 
who child-like, in the midst of public calamity have been playing 
in the streets, are collected as they go on from their companions, 
the children of the unbelievers. One child of this class, however, 
pleads powerfully with the angel near him to be taken with those 
of the Christians, and you see by the face of the angel that he will 
not plead in vain. 

In the inner room, on the easel that a pupil might copy it, was 
his picture of Anacreon reading his Poems to his Mistress. The 
beauty of the figures, the glow of colour and of poetry in the 
whole scene, were perfectly astonishing, and justly place Kaulbach 
in the first rank of his art as a master of the expression of beauty, 
and for colouring which rivals that of Titian. 

In this room also wei'e pencil sketches of the illustrations of 
Reineke der Fuchs. On a door leading into a third room were 
painted a boy and girl, as if done in the very exuberance of fancy, 
of such loveliness that they would enrich the walls of any house 
whatever. In this room we heard one of his pupils amusing a 
leisure hour with singing and playing on the guitar in a very 



330 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

superior style. Kaulbach himself is very interesting in his appear- 
ance, scarcely yet of middle age, he is of delicate constitution, and 
bears traces in his countenance of his frequent suffering. His 
great modesty and gentlemanly politeness were very attractive. 
He spoke with much enthusiasm of his sojourn in Italy ; regretted 
that he had not time for more travelling; and when we asked if 
he spoke English, replied pointing to his painting, " No, I speak 
no language but German, and — that \" 

The Atelier of the celebrated sculptor Schwanthaler, which 
lies quite on the opposite side of the city, had a very different 
aspect. Here, instead of the solitary artist pondering over his 
sublime designs alone, was a whole host of busy workmen. Here 
was room after room full of models and statues in every stage of 
progress, and other models of which the finished statues were 
complete. In the first room was a gigantic statue of the Grand 
Duke of Baden for his monument at Carlsruhe. One of Rudolph 
of Hapsburg, for the Walhalla; and one of Mozart, the bronze 
cast from which has since been set up in his native city, Salzburg. 
There were the first small models of the Electors of Bavaria, the 
finished statues after which are intended for the new throne-i*oom 
of the palace. A model of the frieze of the Walhalla, the Her- 
mannschlacht, or Battle of Hermann with the legions of Varus ; 
and several of the figures already finished in marble. 

In another room were two Nymphs in marble; Belisarius and 
his daughter, a small group in bronze; the Grand Duke and Duchess 
of Baden; and a small model as Nymphs of the Bhine and Danube. 
In another were men modelling in clay an immense figure of the 
Grand Duke of Baden's father; and in a hole in the wall stood one 
of the small models of the figures in the Glyptothek frieze. But 
the grand figure at this moment in Schwanthaler' s atelier, was the 
just completed one of Hermann himself. He is the central figure 
of^the frieze of the Walhalla portico; the opposing one, of course, 
being Varus the lloman general. The figure of Hermann is ten 
feet high, and is one of the finest creations of the chisel, ancient or 
modern. The artist has caught all the spirit of the Grecian genius 
with the bold originality which gathers inspiration from others, 
but makes its work its own. The young warrior stands in combat 
with his antagonist, like a glorious demi-god. Full of youth, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 331 

strength and grace, his face, of the finest manly beauty, is kindled 
with the fire of patriotism and courage. There is the triumph of 
certain conquest and of patriotic vengeance in his eye; on his cheek 
the cool steadfastness of watchful wisdom. The statue is of fine 
white marble, the figure only partially covered with a robe, and 
every limb, every fold of the dress, is full of spirit and expression. 
The wings on his helm seem alive in every feather. 

The figures of this noble frieze are not in relievo, but perfect, 
and standing separate from the pediment. With the boldness 
which characterizes the king and the artists of Munich, they have 
ventured on what has never been attempted since the classic ages; 
that of adorning the friezes of their public buildings, not with 
mere relievos, but with distinct and perfect statues. The frieze 
of the portico of the Glyptothek was the first; and this is the 
second splendid example of this in modern times. The frieze is 
seventy-two feet long, and will stand sixty feet above the position 
of the spectator. The whole group consists of fifteen figures. 
Hermann stands high above the rest: for, as on the southern 
portico the artist has represented the successful close of the war 
of Germany with France; here, on the northern one, he seizes the 
moment when Hermann strikes down the power of Rome in Germany. 
He is now not the assertor, but the achiever of his country's 
freedom. Varus, who stands before him, is in the act to stab 
himself; the Roman, behind Varus, is turning to flee; a standard- 
bearer is falling; and behind him lie the slain. Behind Hermann 
are three German warriors rushing on with battle-axe, sword, and 
club; the bard, with his harp; the prophetess; and a group of 
women tenderly binding the wounds of an old man who has fallen 
in battle. Since we saw the figure of Hermann the whole frieze 
is completed, and excites general admiration. 

What astonishes you in these Munich artists, painters, sculp- 
tors, and bronze -founders alike, is their daring, free, adventurous, 
and prolific spirit. There is nothing servile; nothing imitative; 
nothing merely neat and clever. They seem to have taken inspi- 
ration from the ancients, but not to have been overawed by them; to 
have drank from the same fountain of soul and beauty, and to aspire 
to the same greatness. All their works have a freedom, a master- 
ship, a novelty and livingness about them, which prove them to 



332 CHARACTEEISTICS OF 

belong to anew era of art; and they are poured out in that vigorous 
abundance, which testifies the power and confidence of the master. 
As we walk through their studios, and from one to another, we feel 
as men must have done in the days of Greece, when Praxiteles and 
Phidias were busy amid their pupils, hewing out glorious form after 
form, to embellish the temples of the gods and the palaces of princes. 
When we recollect that we are not in one of the great capitals of 
the world, in Paris or London, but in that of little Bavaria, our 
wonder is the greater; and what in those cities is progressing, 
bearing any resemblance to these works, in their spirit, their great- 
ness, or their affluent abundance? 

It is the same in their architecture. They have no fear, and 
produce novelty out of the most unexpected quarters. The Lud- 
wig Strasse is a striking example of this; where vast ranges of 
houses extend, in which the old Saxon ecclesiastical style is intro- 
duced, with its round arches and short round pillars, and peculiar 
zigzag tracery, and other ornaments; and that with the most new 
and even elegant effect. 

The bronze foundery of Stiglmaier, at which we next arrived, 
v is the continuation, or, as it were, appendix to the Atelier of 
Schwanthaler. Here his teeming models are converted into bronze. 
These works are again immense. We went into four or five great 
rooms, each of which was full of workmen, busily employed in 
polishing, hammering, and filing huge limbs of bronze just turned 
out of the moulds; others in preparing the moulds themselves. 
Here lay Titanic heads, here a booted leg of bronze as big as an 
ordinary man. Groups of workmen, reminding us of the earlier 
outlines of Ketsch's song of the Bell, were building up and 
screwing together these huge forms. The sounds were deafening. 
We were then ushered into a small room, in which, like a scene in 
an Arabian tale, stood eight colossal golden statues of the Electors 
of Bavaria; part of those which we have mentioned as preparing 
for the throne-room. The effect was perfectly dazzling. These 
statues are each ten feet high. Masterly figures, wrought in the 
costume, each of his own age, in the most exquisite style of work- 
manship. Evei'y smallest fold of raiment or piece of armour, 
their massy swords and flowing locks, are most beautifully finished, 
and the splendour of such masses of gold is superb beyond con- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 

ception. The whole series consists of fourteen of these gigantic 
figures, of which eight were here complete, and the remainder were 
to be finished in the course of the following year. Five years had 
already been employed upon them; and, including the designing 
and modelling, each figure costs 2000/. sterling; half the value 
consisting in the gold with which they are overlaid. 

In a lower room where the workmen were preparing the moulds 
stood an immense swan, intended by the king to be placed in the 
centre of a fountain at one of his country palaces. Here, in a pit 
sunk into the earth, was a vast plaster figure of the Grand Duke 
of Hesse, having an iron ring in its head, and a pulley by which 
it can be raised, and a large hole in its back, by which if necessary 
to descend into it. Here also, besides huge parts of figures, and 
seven-leagued boots lying about, were designs in relievo for the 
front of the monument of Mozart, very beautiful. 

Coming out of these works we observed a lofty tower near, 
and asked what it was. " ! that was only the wooden structure 
in which the men were building up the clay model of the figure of 
the Bavaria, intended to stand on the Theresien Meadow, where the 
people hold their annual feast in October." We entered, and 
stood in astonishment. What a figure ! It is that of a female, 
standing with a lion by her side ; a female figure of fifty-five feet 
high ! and to be placed on a pedestal of thirty feet, altogether, 
eighty-five feet high ! It was as if the days of the Anakim were 
come back, and this were the statue of one of their queens. The 
statue is perfectly sublime in its immensity. The grace and 
majesty of the design are no less wonderful than the boldness of 
the idea. The first model from which the workmen mould, although 
many degrees larger than life, appeared dwarfish in the presence 
of this nearly completed Titaness. The head alone of the Bavaria 
is taller than the tallest man; and the thumb-nail of one of the 
hands, which was reared against the wall, was as long as a man's 
whole hand. Scaffolding, a perfect network of poles and ladders, 
was raised about this modern female Colossus, on which swarmed 
the workmen busily building it up. In one corner stood Schwan- 
thaler's plaster model, and in another lay a mountain of clay for 
completing the figure. When this stupendous statue is set on 
the place of its destination, lofty as a tolerable church tower, it 



334 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

will be an animating thought for the people when they collect 
around it, that it is not only a symbolic image of their country, 
but is formed of the cannon taken from their enemies, heaps of 
which were lying about ready for the purpose. 

But we have been so deeply absorbed with the wonders of 
recent art in Munich, that no space is left us for a hundred other 
things in it. Its social life, its festive resorts, its customs, and 
costumes. We could linger long in its painted arcades in the 
Hofgarten, with its brilliant frescoes, and mottoes by its own royal 
builder. In its English garden, with its extensive woodland walks, 
through which, in various channels sweeps the " Isar rolling 
rapidly" its waters of beautiful malachite green. In its garden- 
temple, with its summer evening music, the streaming tide of 
people in their gay " Miinchen Tracht" ever pouring on. We 
could visit its Museum, its Odeon, its Frohsinn, its Kunst Verein, 
and many other Vereins. Its gay resorts in the country round ; 
Tivoli, Schwabing, Nymphenburg, Sendling, Harlaching, and a 
score of others, where Bavarian beer, music, and laughter abound. 
We would view again, and more exactly, that fine Isar gateway, 
with its splendid warrior array in fresco, the Emperor Ludwig and 
his knights returning from the battle of Miilldorf; its Virgin and 
Child on one side, so mild and holy, and its venerable bishop on 
the other, both painted on a gold ground ; and its towers, on which 
hang its lordly row of shields with armorial emblazonments painted 
in bright colours. 

Shall we say nothing of its merry Folks-theatre in the Vorstadt 
Au, to which we marched resolutely, through dirty streets and wet 
days, to its heroic plays, such as K'atchen of Heilbronn, that favourite 
of all the common people of Germany, in which the Armourer's 
reputed daughter turns out to be really the Emperor's daughter, 
and the Vehme Gericht holds its secret tribunal, and castles are 
burnt, and the faithful Katchen, patient as Griselda and devoted 
as Jeannie Deans, finally triumphs over her fate and her rival, 
and marries her beloved knight ? Shall we say nothing either of 
its farcical and humorous pieces, reflecting the life of their own 
order, and applauded with thunders of enthusiasm by the joyous 
spectators? Nothing of this popular old theatre of wood, where 
for a few kreutzers each, four representations per day, — in the after- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 335 

noon at four o' clock and eight o'clock, are given, and crowded 
artizans, on Blue Mondays and other leisure days, sit with their 
wives and families, or their Sch'atze (treasures, their sweethearts), 
and are as happy and critical as the king can be at the opera? 

And of that opera, that royal theatre, is nothing to be said ? 
Yes, we must allow ourselves to express our sense of the pleasant 
and satisfactory manner in which all that relates to theatric repre- 
sentation is conducted. The early hours, the well-regulated house, 
the morale of the pieces, all deserve the utmost attention of the 
friends of the drama, and might be imitated with the utmost 
advantage in our own country. The theatre, the opera, the ballet, 
all which we witnessed, were of" a class to which the strictest 
moralist could have nothing to object. The orchestra, the acting 
and singing, were equally excellent and scientific, if no stars of the 
first magnitude could be said to present themselves. Then the 
order, and the early hours, how admirable ! At half-past six you 
can walk to the theatre, after your family tea. You have already 
secured your places, the very best of which are where our inferior 
ones are — in the pit, because here you have at once the most direct 
view of the whole stage, and can locate yourself as to distance as 
you please. No one can possibly usurp your seat, because it is no 
seat at all till you arrive, being turned up and locked to the back. 
Thus the most perfect order and quiet are produced. You find, 
whether you go to box or parterre, the most respectable class 
around you. Between the acts, ices and confections are handed 
about by servants in livery ; sentinels stand at the door to main- 
tain order there. The house itself is handsome and convenient, 
and you are sure to witness acting, and to hear singing and music 
which are scientific and superior, if they do not happen to astonish 
you by their genius. All is over by ten o'clock. In retiring, you 
find, owing to the early hour and the excellent arrangements, all 
order : no crushing, hurrying, crying for carriages, nor yourself 
thrust, as it were, out of the mouth of a furnace into a midnight 
shivering street ; but families in groups can walk home, if they 
please, just as they came. 

By this means, instead of a dissipation which destroys the 
night, and condemns the next day and personal health and com- 
fort together, the resort to the theatre and opera becomes a social 



336 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

enjoyment of the most agreeable and also refining kind. People 
wearied with the business and cares of the day, can thus at a very 
trifling expense, enjoy all the charms of music, singing, and 
dramatic representation, with their families, without disturbing a 
single domestic arrangement, or costing a single extra hour to 
themselves or servants. Then the expense ! In London you must 
pay to go into the pit, at the Opera, eight shillings and sixpence; 
here, you pay only twice tenpence, i.e. a gulden. Inferior places 
are proportionably low, down to fivepence; for which young men 
of all classes, and especially students in throngs, stand in the parts 
not occupied with seats. Thus, for fivepence may be witnessed the 
finest opera, which would cost with us twenty times the sum. Is 
it therefore any wonder that all the refinement of mind and taste to be 
drawn from this source should be twenty times as widely diffused? 

But let us, before quitting Munich, step a moment from the 
theatre to the church, without which we cannot have a clear idea 
of the various life and scenery here. The Metropolitan, or Frauen 
Kirche, the cathedral, is a noble church; lofty, spacious, and finely 
enriched with splendid altar-pieces, frescoes, carving, and monu- 
ments. In the choir stands the magnificent tomb of the Emperor 
Ludwig the Fourth, a Bavarian. With its four kneeling knights, 
in bronze, each with a standard in his hand; and, on each side, 
standing a figure of a Bavarian duke; while through openings 
you can see within, the figure of the Emperor, seated in all his 
imperial robes on his throne; angels holding a canopy over him, 
and the emblazoned Bavarian shield at his feet. From the roof 
of the choir hangs the singular spectacle of a cardinal's hat, there 
dedicated to St. Bennus, in 1607, by Cardinal Clesselius of Vienna, 
a native of Munich. 

But it is not for the church itself, but for the scene which it 
presents, that we visit it. You here behold all the pomp of 
Catholic worship, amid all the accompaniments of painting, 
statues, and of that ample and lofty church, filled with kneeling 
throngs; while, from a full orchestra, such singing bursts forth, with 
the pealing of the organ, as is rarely heard. Amid the chorus of 
voices you readily recognise the clear and trumpet one, of some of 
the finest singers of the opera; and the whole performance, as it 
may most fitly be called, is of the most enchanting and inspiring 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



337 



character. But, besides this, you have worship, too, under its 
most devoted and manifold aspects. Kneeling figures cover the 
floor, and light it up with the gay colours of the most diversified 
costumes. Here are assembled the people, both from city and 
country; and nowhere could you, at one glance, obtain so extensive 
an observation of the singular varieties of costume which Bavaria 
presents. What is called the Munchener Tracht, or costume of 
Munich, is seen here in all its glory. It is at once peculiar, and 
amongst the most elegant of the costumes of the whole Continent. 
It is the costume of the females of the burger and lower classes, 
and is worn also by servant-maids and country girls of the vicinity. 
Its great distinguishing portions are 
those of the head and bodice. The 
hair is neatly dressed, and braided in 
front; and on the back of the head 
is placed a sort of small cap, of gold 
or silver brocade, which confines the 
hair, and gives a particularly brilliant 
and elegant finish. This Kiegel- 
Haube, as it is called, costs from 
twenty to thirty gulden — from thirty 
shillings to three pounds English; 
some cost as much as four pounds. 
Besides this there is a necklace, con- 
, .. • , , sisting of five or six 
gold or silver chains, 
fastened by a clasp, 
which costs twenty 
jggi|i; gulden more. The 
■ bodice is also laced 
I across the front with 
* gold or silver chains 
of equal value. There 
"'■■- are hooks to fasten 

the chains; and coins, called Denk-Miinze, or token-coins, which 
are^often presented by friends or lovers, are hung on each side. 
Thus the whole silver or gold orniture will often amount in value 
to six or seven pounds. 

z 





338 



CHARACTERISTICS OF 



This costume is so graceful that it might be worn by ladies of 
any rank with great effect ; but it is the mark of the burger and 
common class, and therefore has to strive against the natural desire 
of the burger class to cast off what separates them from the higher 
and allies them to the lower. But the king, as he has an eye to 
whatever is beautiful, is a great admirer of this Tracht, and accord- 
ingly you see it on all public occasions in full glory. In the 
throng of the church, or the theatre — in the public walks and 
gardens, the Riegel-Haube still glitters, and produces a very rich 
and lively effect. There is no head-dress which sets off more the 
fresh and lovely features and well-turned heads of the young- 
women than this. 

There is another cap also much worn ; the Pelz-Haube, or fur 
cap. This is round, and has on the top a golden ornament too, 
sunk as it were in a nest. It is by no means so becoming as the 
Riegel-Haube. It has a hot and Tartar look, but gives variety. 




These head-dresses were numerous in this church, as well as the 
neck and bodice chains. Others had little gaudy silk handker- 
chiefs tied at the back of the neck, with the ends sticking out like 
little wings. Others had a crescent-formed stomacher of gold 
brocade, laced up on each side with large silver buttons and Denk 
M'unze. The bodices were of bright silks and satins; and the 
petticoats of the countrywomen plaited in numerous heavy plaits, 
presenting very much the effect of Egyptian drapery. Peasants 
who apparently came from distant dorfs had, instead of the Riegel- 
Haube or Pelz-Haube, bright coloured handkerchiefs tied over 
their heads, and were clad in prints of most showy colours. The 
quantity of rings worn by the common people was amazing. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 339 

Tyrolean peasants mingled in the mass, and increased the niany- 
hued and picturesque spectacle. Many of the people had rosaries 
of beads of blue glass ornamented with silver. The looks of deep 
reverence in all, the fingering of rosaries and muttering of prayers, 
indicated a deeply pious feeling, The women in the Pelz-Haube, 
we observed, were preeminently devotional. On the outside of the 
church we noticed others kneeling round a sepulchre in the wall, 
with a figure of Christ in it, and scattering flowers around. 

But to see the spirit of devotion in its fullest extent, it is 
necessary to enter the Theatiner Kirche. This church, which may 
be said to be a caricature of St. Peter's at Rome, is in the worst 
taste. Grecian or Italian architecture is at best not the most suit- 
able to a church, but when it is overloaded with wretched orna- 
ments as this is, it is bad indeed. Aloft on all sides, little angels, 
like so many Cupids, are seeming to laugh at the people below, 
and playing all sorts of ludicrous pranks. After the rich glow of 
the Allerheiligen Capelle, in which we had just before been, this 
looked flat and cold in the extreme. It seemed as if the whole 
were carved out of ivory, but not by a master hand. Yet it abounds 
in fine altar-pieces and paintings, some of them even from the 
hands of Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and other by no means con- 
temptible artists. Before every shrine were numbers worshiping. 
Every saint had his little knot of devotees ; but Christ in chains, 
and the Black Virgin by far the most. Some were planting little 
burning tapers around the feet of pillars. Others were planting 
them on the top of the iron railing surrounding the shrines of the 
Christ in Gefangenschaft and the Black Virgin. The rails were 
dropped all over with the wax from the vast number of tapers which, 
from time to time, had been fixed on them. A woman stood with 
a stall, selling these little tapers of different colours, and also little 
prayers, printed on strips of very common paper. There were wax 
legs and arms, and one whole wax baby in swaddling clothes, with 
many hearts and chains of silver, offered at the favourite shrine of 
the Black Virgin. Pictures were also hung up in it, representing 
the Black Virgin appearing to individuals, especially to a soldier 
who was lying in bed ill, and promising them health. 

The reverence for the Black Virgin and Child in Catholic coun- 
tries is one of the most singular phenomena of this religion. She 

7 O 



<-K 






840 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

and child are as black as any negroes. They are supposed to be 
of Eastern origin. If you ask how they came to acquire this 
transcendent veneration, you get no very satisfactory answer. It 
is a matter of ancient tradition not very clear. One ecclesiastic, 
in reply to my query, said he supposed it was, that as images 
became black with age, the people had an idea that these were of 
the highest antiquity, and therefore more sacred than any other. 
Be that as it may, everywhere these shrines are crowded, and 
loaded with offerings. 

The love of the people for bloody imagery is here again pecu- 
liarly conspicuous. On all sides are paintings and figures of a 
ghastly character. In a side chapel is a real sepulchre, with all 
its solemn apparatus and deathly figure. In the chapel hang 
various paintings, but the people flock with eager zeal to one — that 
of Christ just taken down from the cross, with copious streams of 
blood running from hands, feet, and side. You see the people 
touching this blood and then kissing their hand. Not one wound, 
nor one stream of gore that they do not greedily rub their fingers 
upon again and again, and as often kiss them, as if they could 
never be satisfied. How strange is the contrast between the fine 
taste which the king is diffusing, and this taste which abounds 
amongst the people ! But we must not philosophise ; we must 
depart. 

We quitted Munich with great regret. There is certainly 
scarcely a city in Europe in which a lover of art must feel so 
strong an interest and excitement. In others, literature is more 
active ; and in others again, you can enjoy the contemplation of the 
works of the past ; but here every moment something new in art 
is projected, or is accomplished. There is always some beautiful 
addition to the wealth of art, nascent; something progressing, 
something achieved; and you feel as you do in nature, that there 
is a principle of life and growth around you. 

6. JOURNEY THROUGH SALZBURG AND L1NZ, TO VIENNA. 

Scarcely are you out of the city of Munich on your way 
towards Wasserburg, before you begin to perceive the Tyrolean 
style of building. There are the large projecting roofs ; the out- 
side galleries running all round the house; the wooden tiles all 



GEmiAX CITIES AND SCENERY. 



341 



loosely laid on, and great stones upon them to keep them from 
being blown away. What amazes you is, that these houses are 
not burned down by dozens. They seem as if purposely calculated 




for bonfires. They are all of wood. Walls, floors, roofs, galleries, 
everything is wood; and besides this, wood for firing is piled 
under the galleries, especially under the lower ones, four feet deep, 
where it will remain dry, in such quantities, that to our eyes it 
appears quite terrific. The least accident with fire, and the whole 
is in an irremediable blaze. 

Their wells here too, as in many other parts of Germany, are 
of a most primitive and picturesque kind. The bucket and rope 
are hung to a beam balanced on a stout post. This beam is often 
enormous, and so heavy at one end that its weight counterpoises 
that of the bucket at the other when full of water, so that there is 
nothing to do but to lift this thick end, the beam being so balanced 
as to make this easy to a child ; the bucket descends, and by 
leaving go of the beam, it comes up again of itself. Here, again, 
were plenty of shrines, crosses, and pictures of Saints, Virgins, 
and Trinities, on houses and shutters. 



34£ CHARACTERISTICS OF 

At a post station, about ten English miles from Munich, we 
met the Elector of Hesse-Cassel returning from Bad-Gastein. In 
two or three plain sort of travelling carriages were the Elector, 
the Electoress, and their suite. The Elector is a stout-built old 
man, with a very active manner, and very white hair, eyebrows, 
and whiskers. He came out of the carriage, and clapped himself 
down on a wooden bench at the house-end; but as this did not 
seem quite to satisfy him, as being too much in the sun, he 
retreated again to the carriage, and two of his servants speedily 
brought from the inn a tall glass of sugar-water, with its tall 
wooden spoon for the Electress, a large, jolly dame, and for him, 
bread and cheese and Bavarian beer. With a truly ploughman's 
appetite, and in ploughman style, he cut a good hunch of bread, 
clapped it in the palm of his left hand, and a corresponding piece 
of cheese, which he took between the thumb and forefinger of the 
same hand, and with a large pocket-knife began to play away at 
these homely viands with the keenness of a hunter, or of a Cossack 
after a day's pursuit of the enemy. He drunk off the deckel-glass 
of beer, a sort of glass tankard holding more than a pint, and 
despatched one of the men for a second. In less than ten minutes 
he had given unquestionable evidence of his appetite for bread and 
cheese and beer being as sharp as his appetite for play. The 
bread and cheese had vanished; the two tankards of beer after 
it ; he wiped his moustachios, the whips cracked, and away went 
the carriages, the Elector having laid a tolerable foundation for his 
dinner at Munich. 

We ourselves drove another stage, and then stopped to dine at 
a large and primitive village inn. Our landlord, as is often the case 
in this part of Bavaria, was an extensive farmer as well as Wirth. 
The house was very large, and on the opposite side of the way 
stood barns and farm -buildings, also on an extensive scale. The 
common room, into which we first entered, was immense, with a 
huge iron stove, rude wooden chairs and tables, and a number of 
women busily at work, ironing, getting up linen, and sewing. The 
landlady, though apparently having plenty of household work on 
her hands, soon sent us into a little side room an excellent dinner, 
in which stood pre-eminent pancakes and Bavarian beer. Pancakes, 
it is well for travellers to know, can be had at a short notice in 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



343 



if 'ir 



almost any village inn in Germany, of most excellent quality, and 
where you would find it difficult out of the regular dinner hour to 
procure anything else very palatable, except coffee, ever the staple 
resource of the traveller. Here, for the first time we were waited 
on by one of those young and lovely Kelnerinen, or waiting maids 
so celebrated in this part of Bavaria, 
and the adjoining ones of Austria. 
Their fame is well merited. A love- 
lier set of young women we have no 
where seen. They must, in fact, be 
carefully selected for their office; and 
very probably any young girls growing 
up very handsome are trained with a 
view to this service. In all other parts 
of Germany you are waited on by men. 
These Bavarian and Austrian Hebes 
wear at their sides, on the left, a bunch 
of keys, on their right one of those 
large leather purses, which are made 
familiar to English eyes by being so 
often introduced into his designs by Retsch. They have often, as 
in this instance, the name of the fair Kelnerin worked on the band 
of the pocket. The Miinchener-Tracht continues to be worn here, 
and seen still farther on the way towards Salzburg, and in this 
pretty costume, with a native, or more probably an acquired grace 
and sweetness of manner, these young damsels may well be objects 
of general admiration. 

At Wasserburg, a little town in a hollow amongst sandy hills, 
and swept nearly completely round by the river Inn, built as if on 
purpose to be often under water, and so often indeed deeply in it 
that it is raised on lofty arches, and the people frequently have to 
go from house to house in boats, we were in a similar inn, large 
and very old-fashioned. Here was another of these Kelnerinen, of 
singular beauty; and the landlady, now a little soft pillow of a 
woman, must have been in her youth very handsome, and was very 
probably one of these comely Kelnerinen; very dangerous personages 
indeed to young and sentimental landlords, as well as guests. Our 
Wirthin was as agreeable as she must have been pretty; most atten- 




344 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

tive, friendly, and talkative, taking her seat near us at our tea, and 
watching that we had everything that we wanted. She formed a 
very soft and sunny contrast to our young Kelnerin, who was of a 
slight but very beautiful figure, somewhat pale, and with small 
regular features. A younger sister of the Erau Wirthin, who could 
make no claim to the chai*ms either of her sister or the Kelnerin, 
however made us sensible of those which she did possess, by 
honouring us with her by no means contemptible performances on 
the piano, and accompanying them with a very sweet voice. 

Our next day's journey to Salzburg was through a singularly 
pleasant and happy-looking country. In Bavaria the landed 
property descends to the eldest son. The Elector Albrecht IV., 
called the Wise, for this and similar measures, seeing the poverty 
which resulted both to nobles and people from the endless divisions 
and sub-divisions of family property, established the law of primo- 
geniture, and here you behold strikingly the effects of it. There 
are no longer only the small patches of land, with the peasants, 
their proprietors, at work on them, but large farms and large and 
substantial farm-houses. The corn and grass lie in great expanses, 
as belonging to great concerns. The dwellings, with their exten- 
sive farms and outbuildings, had an air of cleanness, lightness and 
substantiality about them, as the abodes of considerable wealth, and 
of a class superior to bauers. They were mostly still in the 
Tyrolean style, with projecting roofs, ornamented gables, outside 
galleries, and little cupolas on the ridge for a bell. Everywhere 
these little cupolas were indispensable; even the smallest and rudest 
cottage had its cupola or little belfry, were it only of four stakes 
with a little thatched or shingle roof, or even of a forked stick, 
and the bell hung between the prongs. Here too, a sight most un- 
common in Germany, the fields were divided by fences, not of living 
thorn indeed, but of slanting poles, which seen on all sides produced 
a curious effect. The fields were large and full of fine cattle ; for, 
with fences, they were not obliged either to keep them everlasting 
prisoners within doors, or perpetually to w r atch them without. The 
aspect was more English than anything that we had seen in this 
country. Soft green slopes, extensive meadows of grass and clover 
plots, intermingled with rapid clear streams, scattered woods, and 
prosperous-looking villages, with the Salzburg alps rising every 
moment more bold and distinct in the foreground. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



315 



A singular feature in the scene was presented by their mode of 
drying their heavy crops of clover, of linseed, and even of oats. 
The crops were rank, the ground moist, and the process of drying 
not a very rapid one for anything lying on the earth. Instead, 
therefore, as with us, these crops being left on the ground, and 
repeatedly turned till dry, they were hung on tall poles with pegs 
in them, so that the air could constantly blow through them. By 
this plan they are much sooner dry, without any further labour, and 
there is also this attendant advantage, that the seed is not knocked 
out. This plan might be advantageously introduced into many 
parts of our own country, especially into such counties as Lincoln, 
Cambridge, and Huntingdon, where you may see the heavy crops 
of grass and clover lie on the ground ten days or more, to wither 
before they are in any manner moved. In the north of Scotland, 
the Scotch islands, and in Ireland, I 
imagine this mode would be of great 
service in the midst of a moist atmo- 
sphere, except that in these places 
wood is often scarcely to be found. 

These poles, thus clothed, have 
a very odd effect, particularly in 
the dusk of evening. As they stand 
clad in shaggy grass or corn, they 
present to the eye of fancy trains of 
giants, old hermits, or pilgrims of a 
rude and woodland age, marching on 
their way. Some of the poles have 
pegs artificially driven into them, 
others are young spruce fir-trees, or 
the tops of larger ones, with their 
boughs, which naturally grow very 
horizontally and circularly, cut off at 
the lower end, at about eighteen inches 
in total width, and gradually tapering 
upwards. 

The costumes here were peculiar, 
straw hats, and looked very like Welsh women. In other places 
white straw hats. The men, large black boots, black leather small- 




The women wore black 




346 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

clothes, with an ornamented knife and fork in a little pocket on 
the side of the thigh. They had broad leather ornamented bands 

round their waists, and hats with 
small brims and tall crowns, hol- 
lowed out at the sides, adorned 
with a cord and tassels of black 
silk, of gold, or straw; with a 
bunch of artificial or real flowers, 
or a feather, or tuft of fur. 

We stopped to dine at the 
village of Stein, famous for the 
ruins of the castle, and the dun- 
geons of the robber-knight Von 
Stein. There is scarcely anything 
in the remains of the fastnesses 
of the rude ages of Germany more striking than these, nor more 
corroborative of the horrible traditions of those monstrous times. 
Von Stein's castle stands on the edge of a lofty precipice, where 
he could see all persons approaching from Salzburg or Munich, 
and descend to plunder and make captive. In the rock, which is 
pudding-stone, he made his captives hew out most extensive ranges 
of caverns, flights of steps, and subterranean passages. The caverns 
are feebly lighted by narrow slits cut through to the face of the 
precipice. In these he confined all his prisoners who were men of 
substance, in order to extort enormous ransoms from them. He 
had one dismal cell, which he called his Hunger-hole, in which 
he confined those whom he determined to put to death, with a jug 
of water and a small loaf of bread, and there left them to perish. 
He had also a deep pit cut in the heart of the solid rock, into 
which he let down such as were refractory, or on whom he wished 
to exercise particular vengeance. In one of those dungeons he is 
said to have kept his own mother confined for eleven years. His 
son becoming attached to a village maiden, he confined her here. 
The son discovered her already in the hunger-hole, and was in the 
act of rescuing her when Von Stein entered the dungeons. The 
son blew out the light on first hearing his approach, and retreated 
along the passage to seek a nook of concealment. The father 
hearing some one moving just before him, stabbed him mortally in 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 347 

the back before he knew whom it was. In the remaining rooms 
of the tower are still preserved parts of his armour and his saddle. 
The walls are covered with rude designs of him and his exploits, 
and verses as rude, as 

Hainz von Stein ein wilder Schnupphan, 
Den midlins hat vile laidl antlian, 
Aber die miinchener in alien eliren, 
duweil er that das ganzland beschweren, 
die wasser und salzburger allmitsamt, 
Seines handwerk geleget ban. 

den sie brachen en sein veste 
Siegfried Gebsattl that das beste ; 
er stach den hainzen todt zum lohn, 
und war sinsun wusst nix davon, 
der hainz hat ihm sein lieb gerkubt, 
Walltrand von Trossburg wie man seit. 

The chief import of which is, that the people of Munich, 
Wasserburg, and Salzburg united, broke into the fortress of this 
wild reiver, who had done the country much mischief, and put an 
end to his handiwork. Siegfried Gelbsatle did the best. He 
stabbed him to death, in reward of his having carried off the love 
of Waltrand von Trossburg, who, however, till then knew not 
who was the offender. 

Under the rude sketch of Stein attacking a boar with a spear : 

Hainz von Stein unverdrossen 
By O filing hat er mich getroffen. 

Hans von Stein, unwearied wight, 
Slew me at Offling in my flight. 
1472. 

The mountains of Salzburg now rose high, wild, and beautiful 
before us. The country over which we travelled was level and 
green; and presently leaving the guide-posts, the toll-bar beams, 
and the tall poles marking the frontier boundary, all gay with the 
blue and white stripe of Bavaria, we encountered those of Austria, 
with the heavy yellow and black, and found ourselves before the 
custom-house. The many accounts we had heard of the extreme 
strictness of the Austrian officers, and of their troublesome search, 
had made us somewhat anxious; not on account of possessing any- 
thing contraband, but from the natural dislike of having all your 
travelling requisites turned out and uselessly rummaged. We had 



348 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

heard travellers declare, that every little thing had been opened, 
and every article, even to dirty linen, thrown wide out in heaps 
upon the very road. In our case nothing could be more reasonable 
or more polite than the conduct of the officers here. They asked 
if we had any tobacco, which is a state monopoly, the emperor 
being the great tobacconist of Austria, or sealed letters; made a 
somewhat formal entry of the particulars of our passport, of our 
whence and whither; ordered one of our trunks to be opened, 
declared, without disturbing a single article, that it was quite 
satisfactory; and, after entering into familiar chat, on the weather 
and the beauty of the country, as the packages were replaced, 
wished us a very good journey. It is true, as we delivered the 
keys to the inferior officer, there was a gulden amongst them, 
which I observed the man very carefully grasped, as he would have 
done in most other places. 

Salzburg, which we now entered, is anything but a beautiful 
town. It lies on the banks of the Salza, a broad and rapid moun- 
tain stream, and is surrounded by lofty mountains. It reminded 
us, by its position, of Heidelberg, except that, instead of hills, it 
is enclosed by mountains. The town itself has a gloomy, heavy, 
and unpleasing aspect. The buildings, and especially the church, 
are heavy and tasteless. Soon tired of the town itself, of its foun- 
tain with sea-horses prancing, we walked to the front of the house 
in which Mozart was born, and then began to ascend its heights; 
and how glorious are they, and the Alpine land which they shew 
around you! Here towers aloft the huge castle immediately over 
the town; beyond the green and rushing river rises the venerable 
convent of the Capuchins; behind you, soar the dark coves and 
naked summits of the Untersberg, with silent and snow-capped 
peaks, right and left. Amongst these peaks, in the intervening 
valleys, not only has sublimity 

Throned herself in icy halls, 

but traditions and sagas have made their stronghold. In no part 
of Germany are legends so rife as in the mountain country round 
Salzburg. Under the Untersberg itself, the country people firmly 
believe that Charlemagne and all his Paladins sleep in complete 
armour, ready, at the proper time, to come forth to the rescue and 
renown of Germany. You are, in fact, now on the border of one 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 319 

of the most enchanting regions of Europe, and by far the finest 
portion of Germany. Travel which way you will into these hills, 
you cannot be weary; sojourn here for months, for a whole summer, 
you must be right, for the whole wide region is a fairyland of moun- 
tains, enchanting valleys, lakes like expanses of emerald, alpine 
torrents, dark forests, and nooks of such elysium beauty as are 
seldom discovered by the foot of the delighted wanderer. 

Within the distance of a day's excursion, lies Berchtesgaden, 
a charming seat of the king of Bavaria, in the midst of mountains 
of from six to nine thousand feet high, as the Untersberg, the 
Watzberg, the Hohe Gohl, etc.; amid summits the abode of the 
eagle, the chamois, and the eternal snows. Still nearer lies Aigen, 
the seat of Prince Schwarzenberg. In different directions lie many 
beautiful lakes; the Tegernsee, the Chiemsee, the Konigsee, the 
Traunsee, and many other lakes and floods of the most lovely 
smaragdine-coloured waters. Around most of these extends the 
most enchanting scenery. The dark forests, and their people, wood- 
fellers, charcoal-burners, and miners; vast salt-mines, with all 
their peculiar scenery and people; and not least, the legends and 
Catholic superstitions, which exist here in all their strength, make 
this a most attractive region to the lovers of whatever is sublime 
and beautiful in nature and curious in man. In fact, you are here 
in a sort of promontory of the region which embraces in its extent 
the Tyrol and Switzerland, and the north of Italy; of the mountain- 
land, whose feet extend themselves towards the Danube, the 
Adriatic, and the Mediterranean; into Germany, Italy, and France. 

Salzburg itself seems to be one of the most intense points of 
Catholic superstition. It was, in fact, for many ages an entirely 
ecclesiastical state. Its archbishop was also its prince, and there 
is yet no part of Germany where superstition more firmly maintains 
its ground. In no city which I ever saw are the signs of this 
more visible. Bloody pictures of saints and saviours you have 
elsewhere; but here, on the outside of the Capuchin convent, you 
have actually a large crucifix; and, out of the side of the figure of 
Christ, a leaden pipe, of at least a foot long, and half an inch in 
diameter, through which a stream of ever-running water spouts, 
and no doubt is regarded by the people, as it is meant they should, 
as the water of everlasting life. 



350 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

The church of St. Sebastian, in which lies buried the once 
famous Paracelsus, has an ancient and crowded cemetery, full of 
the most extraordinary testimonies of the rank superstition of the 
place. Black crosses and emblems of mortality stand thick and 
gloomily. A heavy colonnade surrounds the cemetery, thronged 
with shrines, tombs of saints, frescoes of a holy character, and 
pictures and ornaments without end. But the most extraordinary 
spectacle is that of numbers of black wooden crosses, and naked 
grinning skulls, ranged before some of those shrines, or tombs of 
saints or bishops. Whether the black crosses had been placed 
there as tokens of respect to the saint, or as marks of how many 
people were buried below, we could not ascertain; but the skulls 
were the most singular sight. These were of all dates and ages, 
ranged on shelves. Some brown and decayed, some fresh and 
recent, and evidently too white ever to have been buried. They 
had the names of their former possessors written under them, and 
date, some as late as 1823. We were told that they were those of 
devotees, who, before their death, had vowed them to this destina- 
tion. So far as our experience goes, this exhibition is unique. 

Possibly Salzburg has owed, and still owes much of its sacred 
character to the lofty eminences on which its convents and chapels 
are perched. In all ages, from the beginning of the history of 
superstition, its priests and its votaries have had a peculiar pen- 
chant for high places. It was so with the worship of Baal, whose 
fires still are kindled on the tops of most high hills in Germany 
on Midsummer eve, and even in the streets of towns, and through 
which the children, without knowing the origin of the custom, still 
run in dogged perseverance to pass through the fire to Moloch. 
It was on high places that Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven, was 
worshiped by the Syrians; and it is still on such high places that 
the Catholics in Germany worship their queen of heaven, and plant 
the shrines of her crucified son. Calvarien Bergen, or Hills of 
Calvary, and chapels of Maria Hilf, or Mary the Helper, still stand 
aloft in hundreds throughout Catholic Germany. The craft of 
superstition has never been insensible to the impressive effect of 
worshiping on lofty eminences in the face of the clear heaven above 
and of the outspread earth beneath. In this respect Salzburg is 
peculiarly fortunate; and long covered ways, of almost innumerable 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 351 

steps, ascend to its chapels and monasteries, so that its votaries 
can go up to them in all weathers, while, on the walls, from space 
to space, stand graven images of saints, and paintings of saintly, 
haggard scenes, to edify them as they climb. 

On the Sunday morning, the narrow streets of Salzburg and its 
long wooden bridge swarmed with country people hastening to these 
shrines, and then to the shops to make their purchases for the 
ensuing week, where, by ten o'clock, they were all as busy as bees. 
The men had by no means an attractive costume, looking all very 
much like hackney coachmen, but the women were, many of them, 
uncommonly good-looking, and their costume showy and picturesque. 
They had bright pink dresses, with little dark bodices or jackets, 
worn often with white sleeves, and black silk handkerchiefs tied 
most becomingly over the head, with long ends hanging behind ; or 
they had that large kind of head-dress 
of gold brocade, peculiar to Salzburg, 
having much the appearance of a 
helmet, and standing out far behind. 
Others had merely black gauze ones 
of the same shape. The Pelz-Haube 
were here seen too, but worn at the 
back of the head, instead of upright* 
as at Munich, and at each side little ears of black lace. Many of 
them also wear broad black velvet bands round their necks, fastened 
with heavy clasps of richly worked silver. 

We were struck with the different style of person prevailing to 
what we had seen in any other part of Germany. A lighter and 
livelier cast of features, a slenderer and more agile figure, altogether 
we should say more handsome and graceful, and denoting a different 
race or mixture of races; and as we advanced farther into Austria 
this became still more obvious amongst its people. On the contrary, 
the soldiers in the garrison here were of a totally different caste, and 
no doubt were from some distant part of this singularly compounded 
empire; they had an Asiatic or rather Tartar look, short faces, flat 
features, and sallow complexions. 

A few words must suffice for our journey to Ischl, where indeed 
many words would fail to describe the noble beauty of the scenes 
through which we passed. At first ascending steeply for some 




352 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

miles, we could, as we turned, occasionally descry the spires of 
Salzburg below, and the lofty heights of the Untersberg above. 
For hours we then went over hill and dale; the hills clothed to the 
very summits with pine woods, and the valleys covered with the 
most luxuriant grass, and so richly strewn with flowers that the 
ground looked like one gay carpet. By the road-side the most 
beautiful flowers common to our gardens hung from the banks, or 
gleamed from the wood-sides, and tempted the hand. The leaves 
of the Christmas rose were in abundance, shewing that in early 
spring its large white blossoms must have greatly beautified the 
scene. The dogtooth violet started richly between the mossy stones : 
there were a pretty kind of white and yellow Daphne; a large blue 
gentian; splendid blue and pale yellow salvias, with very long- 
flowers; and the rich mountain pinks grew in abundance. 

We stopped in a lofty and sweet country to dine. Opposite to 
our inn was a church, into which, as it was a sacred day, the 
country people were pouring in crowds. The men wore those tall 
hollow-sided hats, and most of them carried their coats on their 
arms into the church. Many went and knelt down at the graves 
of their deceased friends, or at that of some one noted for his 
sanctity. The crosses and monuments at the graves here were 
composed principally of thin iron, wrought into all sorts of scroll- 
work and twining shapes, and much gilt. On every one hung a 
little vessel, with a lid for holy water. There was not a drop of 
water, however, in any one of them, yet the poor people still 
mechanically popped their fingers into them and crossed them- 
selves. Many of these iron-work little monuments, besides the 
gilding, were ornamented with little wretched, coloured pictures 
out of prayer-books, representing some grotesque object holding 
up its hands to some good saint in a most supplicating manner. 
Others had a little recess, with a little door in them, in which such 
a picture was deposited. Many of the graves, also, had a frame- 
work of wood set upon them, filled with powdered charcoal, perhaps 
as a preventive of contagion to the relatives who went there to 
repeat their prayers. 

Soon after noon we passed over a lofty eminence, and the 
mountainous country towards and round Ischl lay before us. From 
this height, and all the way in our descent towards Ischl, we were 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 353 

filled with admiration of the scenes around us. Mountains and 
dark forests presented themselves everywhere; but on our right, 
one group of bare eminences lifted themselves far above the rest, 
and by their utter and stony nakedness, by the snow lying in the 
hollows between them, by their still maintaining their conspicuous 
position wherever we were, and by that dreamy silence which seems 
to hang about such lofty masses, pronounced themselves to belong 
to the giants of the region. On our left, lakes and streams of the 
most wonderfully intense and beautiful green extended themselves 
amid grey meadows and the feet of the forest hills. The colour of 
the water in Alpine regions is one of the most surprising and 
charming circumstances to those who have not seen them before. 
The colour, be it blue, as the Rhone and the streams on that side 
of the Alps, or green, as on this side, is so brilliant, so deep, and 
of such crystalline clearness, that painters hesitate to introduce it 
in its full strength into their pictures, lest it should be pronounced 
out of nature. To the visitor to these regions it is a perpetual 
pleasure in the contemplation. The bright transparency of the 
water, where it happens to be somewhat shallow, makes the stony 
bottom appear at a distance like white marble; where it is deeper, 
it is of the richest green of the emerald or the smaragdus; in other 
places it shews more of the beryl; and again, when the sun strikes 
upon it, the brilliance of its malachite hue is so intense that you 
can scarcely believe it water. As you wander by the margin of 
these lakes, and see the bottom at great depths lit up by the sun- 
shine, or stand and see the rivers hurrying away all with waters of 
this delicious colour amid the mountains and the hanging branches 
of the dark forests, you can conceive nothing more beautiful or 
more reaching and filling your ideas of fairyland scenery. Ischl 
stands in the midst of such scenery; in the midst of this mountain 
region, and these fairyland lakes and streams. Turn which way 
you will, you see pine forests clothing the mountain sides; mountain 
tops, round which the clouds are hovering, and other far-off glitter- 
ing peaks, whose region is some eight or ten thousand feet of 
elevation in the clear sky. In the valleys which run out here and 
there amid these mountains, rush these bright green waters, or lie 
basking in the sun. Green meadows here stretch along by them, 
with sloping fields on the lower hill sides, all with living fences as 

A A 



354 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

in England, — the only part of Germany where I ever saw them, 
and rustic cottages. Here again the valleys are filled for miles 
with pine woods, in whose openings the barberry-bush shews itself 
all crimson with its berries, and the most beautiful flowers are 
scattered as through a wild garden. Amongst these the richest 
salvias, growing three or four feet high, are very conspicuous; and 
the whole ground is strewn with the tufts of the Christmas-rose, 
betraying how enchanting must have been the bloom of spring there. 
It is impossible that the lover of nature can find a more paradisiacal 
region than the country round Ischl. It is only a pity that Ischl 
itself is not a bathing-place, better supplied with accommodation 
for visitors. It is a favourite resort of the Imperial family of 
Austria. The Ex-empress Maria Louise had been long there, and 
the Emperor of Austria was then on his way thither. This cir- 
cumstance alone would create a popularity for the place, and yet it 
has only two inns of any pretence — the Post, which is always full, 
and the Kreuz, where the landlord, regarding all that come to him 
as coming only because they cannot get into the Post, fleeces them 
for very indifferent accommodations accordingly, and can be very 
surly on remonstrance. 

In this neighbourhood we chanced to witness one of the dances 
of the country. It was Sunday evening, and we were in a retired 
village. Hearing music, and a singular noise of feet and voices in 
a Wirthshaus as we passed, we entered. The scene was worthy of 
Teniers. The house was old, large, and rude. There was a group 
of dancers, and another of drinking and smoking spectators, of a very 
corresponding character. In the kitchen, which stood open, were 
the fat landlady and her fat bare-legged maids broiling over great 
fires, busy preparing a supper for the numbers who were by 
violent exercise also vigorously preparing to devour it. There was 
a blazing, frying, steaming, running, and carrying in of wood by 
big lads, that must have been very satisfactory to the expectant 
dancers. We were told that it was the master miller who was 
giving his annual treat to all those in his employ. The dance 
itself was of the wildest and most grotesque kind. The hinds 
danced in their heavy boots. The girls were of the fattest and 
most ordinary aspect. Now the men all stamped in concert with 
the heel of one boot; now they all clapped in concert their hands; 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 355 

now they all gave sudden screaming shouts, and then each taking 
his partner by the hand, held his hand aloft, and twirled her round 
under his arm as you would twirl a spindle; then each seizing his 
maiden, they waltzed away for a few turns, and then the course of 
stamping, clapping, and outcries went on again. 

In this village, too, we were astonished by a sudden instance of 
that kissing of hands so common in Austria. In many places, in 
token of the receipt of any little favour, they say, " I kiss your 
hand;" but in many others it is no empty figure of speech. For 
a slight donation, or even a civil word, they will take your hand 
and kiss it. Here a little girl presented us with a nosegay, for 
which we gave her a small piece of money. Some time afterwards, 
as we returned up the village, out rushed a young, good-looking- 
woman, and seizing my hand, with an energetic "Ich kiisse die 
Hand," actually did so, to my great wonder. It was the mother 
of the little girl who had presented the flowers. 

From Ischl we traversed the enchanting scenery of what is called 
the Salzkammergut, by the river Traun and the Traunsee, or Traun 
Lake. It is enough to say that this scenery is worthy of its fame. 
The little steamer which is constantly going to and fro on the 
Traunsee, with a very civil English captain, carried us over its 
green waters, beneath the towering peak, the Traunstein, and 
amid all its lovely views of mountains, forests, villages, and wind- 
ing shores, to Gmunden, where a horse-railway conveyed us to 
Linz, over immense plains and through as vast level woods. At 
this handsome and cheerful town we embarked in the Danube 
steamer for Vienna. 

In Linz we first struck upon some Austrian difficulties. Our 
passport, though regularly signed by the Austrian and English 
ambassadors at Munich, had not been done as I requested, namely, 
to Vienna through Salzburg. Salzburg being the last word men- 
tioned, the ambassador's secretary had evidently paid more attention 
to that than to the more important place Vienna, of which there 
proved, to my own surprise on arriving here, to be no mention. 
The police here at first, therefore, insisted that we had no business 
in Linz; had no business beyond Salzburg, and must return, — 
upwards of a hundred English miles ! A little firmness, however, 
and the remark addressed to their vanity, that surely as the police 

a a 2 



356 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

of Salzburg could authorize us to come so far, they could authorize 
us to go ou to Vienna, where the error would be corrected — 
prevailed. They not only signed the passport, but became parti- 
cularly civil. Our difficulties, however, at the inn did not seem 
likely to be so readily overcome. Here, instead of finding a table 
d'hote, where everything is served to you in course, and you have 
nothing to do but to take what comes, and eat in faith, we began 
to dine Austrian fashion, a la carte. A large bill of fare is 
handed to you, out of which to select what course of dishes you 
please. The mischief is, that many of the dishes which are cooked 
for the day are inserted in German characters, and not only so, 
but possess such names that even Germans out of other states are 
often little acquainted with. To an Englishman, it is pretty much 
as if a Chinese bill of fare was set before him; and seldom fails to 
throw strangers into a regular quondary. It is true that you can 
generally procure a bill in French; but foreigners are not always 
aware of this; and even when you get this, the difficulty is but 
half removed, for the dishes have often such a nomenclature 
as is about as intelligible to people in general as that of Kant's 
philosophy. 

Having ourselves conned over the bill presented to us, and 
handed it from one to another, we could not forbear laughing at 
our situation, and called to a waiter to explain the hieroglyphics, 
when a gentleman opposite undertook very kindly to do it for us, 
observing that it was often his office, those bills being a great bore 
to strangers in general. He then called for a French carte, and 
said he would explain to us any items that were strange to us. 
By the friendly assistance of this worthy man, we got light enough 
to guide us in future, and soon found this mode of dining much 
more agreeable than that of the table d'hote. You can select what 
you please; can omit the everlasting boiled beef, the watery soups; 
can have your fish at the beginning instead of the middle of the 
dinner; your meat and vegetable together instead of alternately; 
your meat and game before the pudding and dessert; and can, 
instead of sitting out an hour and half or two hours' dinner, 
economize much time. But that our countrymen, who are merely 
travelling through Austria, and cannot be supposed to have studied 
much of its terms of cookery or its written character, may have 



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GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 357 

some notion of what sort of a bill of fare will be put into their 
hands at a hungry moment, I present them with an actual portion 
of one. 

The third difficulty came on payment. The charge appeared 
enormous, and on remarking it to the waiter, he informed us it 
was made out in schein-geld, that is, a money of very inferior value. 
Here then being compelled to look at the relative value of our 
money, we found that we had to deal with a confusion almost 
endless. In nearly every German state you have the comfort of 
coming to a different coinage, which occasions you some trouble, 
and sends you to school to learn its real worth, of which you begin 
to have a glimmering by the time that your knowledge becomes 
useless; but in Austria you are quite out at sea. In the first place 
we found that our German coin sunk in value about twenty per 
cent.; that zwanzigers, which in other states were worth twenty- 
four kreutzers, were here only worth twenty; thus, in every gulden 
of sixty kreutzers, value twenty-pence, you lost twelve kreutzers, 
or fourpence. But the Austrian money of this value was not the 
only money. This was called Convention's Miinz, or convention's 
coinage, but there was also what is called schein-geld, of which, 
instead of twenty kreutzers being the equivalent of a zwanziger, 
fifty only were an equivalent. This was not all: there was not only 
coined Convention's Miinz, and coined schein-geld, but paper 
Convention's Miinz, and paper schein-geld; or, as it is called, 
Wiener -w'ahrung. To make the confusion more confounded, though 
the coined money had originally the letters CM., Convention's 
Miinz; or W.W., Weiner- w'ahrung, on it, this was often so worn, 
and altogether such wretched bits of metal, that it could only be 
distinguished by a native to which class it belonged. Thus you 
have speedily mixed in your pocket such a medley of unintelligible 
trash, that though some good and resolute heads manage^with 
much labour to drill themselves into a tolerable acquaintance with 
it, by far the greater number quietly resign themselves to their 
certain fate of being pretty well fleeced. 

It was fair time at Linz, and you had a fair field of observation 
of the country people and their tastes. Crosses, beads, pictures of 
saints in endless abundance, were offered to their notice. There 
were little processions to be seen, carrying a smart new crucifix of 



358 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

cast iron, painted black and gaily gilt, of which quantities stand 
ready for sale at the ironmongers, to be consecrated by the bishop, 
before conveyed to the dorf where it was destined to stand in a 
chapel, or at some religious station. The country women were 
good-looking, and had particularly happy and good-natured coun- 
tenances, but never were poor creatures so frightfully dressed. 
They had scarcely any backs or waists to their gowns at all, the 
skirts of which came up almost to their shoulders, and their sleeves 
nearly to their ears. They had no stays, but narrow petticoats, 
and were the most loose and odd figures, or it might almost be said 
odd fish, imaginable, for they had no distant resemblance to fishes 
reared on their tails. They had over their heads red or black 
handkerchiefs tied, and almost every one carried an immense large 
basket on her arm. 

Here also we first saw one of the gipsy-looking dealers in 
iron-wire, who come somewhere far out of Hungary or Wallachia, 
always appear melancholy, wretched, and dirty, and seem to have 
no further communication with people than is necessary to dispose 
of their wire. 

Linz, — with cheerful streets; its fine situation; its fine view of 
the Styrian and Salzburg Alps; its singular towers, peeping on all 
the hills round the city, built as a new experiment in fortification 
by Prince Maximilian of Este; its Pilgrim church, on the lofty 
Postlingberg on the other side of the Danube, whose steep ascent 
will sufficiently give any one an impression of the pains of pil- 
grimage who will climb up to it, as I did, on a hot day, — we 
quitted at five o'clock in the morning under rather peculiar 
circumstances. 

An accident had prevented the arrival of the regular steamer 
from Vienna, and a larger one, usually plying downwards from 
Vienna to Pesth, was sent, which however was compelled to stop 
short for want of depth of water. We must therefore descend as 
far as Wallsee, about twenty English miles, in a common Danube 
boat, with a temporary roof of boards for the occasion. To mend 
the matter the weather was excessively wet, and upwards of seventy 
people, of all ranks and ages, were crowded into this rude con- 
veyance. Everybody, however, seemed disposed to make the best 
of the circumstance. A number of gentlemen got together, and 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 359 

sang for the general entertainment a great variety of popular songs, 
with great spirit and effect. We here again met some former fellow- 
travellers, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Modermann, and made the ac- 
quaintance of our excellent young American friends, Mr. Prentice 
and Mr. Kirkpatrick, and of Major Nelly, of the 77th regiment of 
foot; with all of whom it was to be our lot to spend many very 
charming days. There were, besides, many particularly intelligent 
and friendly Germans; and in fact, the whole company, consisting 
of Germans, English, French, Italians, Turks, and Greeks, seemed 
bent on one object, that of passing the time, spite of the torrents 
of rain and the yet flat banks of the Danube, in the most agreeable 
manner. "We appeared quickly to have reached Wallsee; and with 
immense rejoicing embarked in the steamer, there lying ready, for 
the delightful voyage of the Danube. 

People are fond of comparing the voyages of the Danube and 
the Rhine, and of pronouncing which is the more beautiful. I 
should, myself, find it difficult to say which is the more beautiful 
or interesting. The two great rivers have a certain similarity, 
and yet very great differences. They have both their woods, their 
mountains, their castles, their vineyards, and their legends: but 
the Rhine is more populous and cheerful; the Danube more soli- 
tary and* solemn. You have not those large and populous towns 
seated along the banks of the Danube, nor the same life of com- 
merce on its waters. You have not the same extent of finely culti- 
vated vineyards; the same continued stretch of rocks and preci- 
pices; at least so far as I have traversed it — from Linz to Vienna: 
but you have more splendid woods, more rude and solemn scenery, 
mingled with slopes and meadows of the most soft and beautiful 
character. The Danube has not been for ages, like the Rhine, the 
great highway of commerce, though it has been the scene of bloody 
contests, and of the march of armies. Its towns, therefore, are 
small, few, and far between. Its villages have an antiquated, 
weather-beaten, and half-decaying air; its only life, a few ill-dressed 
peasants, gazing at the steamer as it flies past. Its current is 
rapid and irregular, interrupted with shoals and sandbanks; and 
marshy meadows, where heaps of pebbles, thrown up by the floods, 
testify to its fury in winter and in rainy weather. The Rhine has 
a more joyous and flourishing aspect, with its cities, its populous 



360 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

villages stretching along its banks, and those banks so green, and 
smoothed for the purposes of navigation. On the Danube you 
have solitude; an air of neglect; a stern and brooding spirit, which 
seems to belong to the genius of the past; of trackless woods; of 
solitary miners; of rude feudal chiefs hunting the boar and the 
hart in the wild glens and deep forests — a genius which gives 
reluctantly way to the spirit of Steam, which has invaded it. You 
meet or pass on its waters scarcely a boat. There is no white sail 
greeting you in the distant sunshine; for the boatman dare not 
hoist one, lest the sudden squalls from the hills should sink his 
craft. Vast rafts, now and then, with rude-looking men, float 
down from the distant Bohemian forests. Old and weather-beaten 
towers give you a grim greeting from the shaggy rocks as you 
pass; and views into distant glens and dark woodlands make you 
feel that you are in a far wilder and more savage region than that 
of the Rhine. Campbell, in his so often quoted verses, " On 
leaving a scene in Bavaria," has strikingly indicated the spirit of 
the Danube : 

Yes, I have loved thy wild abode, 

Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore ; 
Where scarce the woodman finds a road, 

And scarce the fisher plies an oar : 

For man's neglect 1 love thee more, 
That art nor avarice intrude 

To tame thy torrent's thunder shock — 

Or prune thy vintage of the rock, 
Magnificently rude ! 

But Campbell has not more livingly embodied the character of 
the Danube than La Motte Fouque, in Undine. Without any 
particular description, you have in Undine the feeling of the 
Danube and its scenes most vividly impressed upon you. There is 
a sternness, a solitude, a mysterious awe connected with its deep 
and dark waters, — a brooding spirit of the gloomy and sublime in 
the voyage of Undine down the Danube, which came most strongly 
on our recollection as we sailed along this great river. 

But all is not so solemn and savage on the Danube. There is 
much of the beautiful' and cheerful mingled with it. The castle of 
Grainberg, a seat of the Duke of Saxc-Coburg; the Imperial palace 
of Boscnberg, where Francis I. used to spend much of his time in 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



361 



Ihe summer; the immense convent of Mblk, with other castles, 
churches, and villages on the banks, or more distantly in view, 




broke brightly and pleasantly forth ; and particularly as you ap- 
proach Vienna, the green steep slopes scattered with beautiful 
trees; the neat cottages and vineyards, alternating with woods 
and rocks, have an indescribable charm. Not far distant from 
Vienna you descry the vast pile of Klosterneuburg, a good way 
from the river; and emerging from the hills, the woods of the 
Prater lie before you ; Vienna itself, on the sloping land to your 
right, with its lofty tapering tower of St. Stephan, offering a noble 
termination to the voyage. 

On this voyage, too, an object on which the eye of the English- 
man will always rest with interest, is the rained castle of Diirren- 
stein, the rugged hold in which Leopold, the mercenary and 
vindictive Duke of Austria, confined Cceur de Lion. It stands on 
high, naked, and savage cliffs, and is itself now a most grim and 
shattered ruin. One can imagine by a glance around, over wild 
hills and thick forests, what a region it must have been in Richard's 
days. Whether the adventure of Blondel occurred here or at 
Trifels, I leave others to conjecture. If that romantic story be 
true, however, it is more probable that it occurred here. It was 
the interest of the avaricious Leopold to keep his captive as secret 



362 



CHARACTERISTICS OF 



r 



as possible, till he had sold him to the Emperor. After he had 
done that, it was the interest of the Emperor, who wanted to make 
his market directly with the English nation, not to leave the fact 
and place of his captivity too secret. Trifels was the property of 
the Emperor ; and it does not appear that his captivity there was 
made by any means secret, because he was conveyed thence to the 
Diet, before which he appeared in chains, and was returned thither, 
whence he also wrote a letter, still extant, urging the raising of 
his ransom as quickly as possible. Diirrenstein was also more in 
the direct route of his overland journey from the East, and there- 
fore more likely to be visited by Blondel than Trifels. 

Campbell, who in his verses quoted above, says of the Danube, 
that for man's neglect he loved it more, must now feel his attach- 
ment much abated, for since the introduction of steam upon it, it 
has been every year more and more frequented. The striking 
growth of travel and traffic upon it is shewn by the following table: 





Steamers from Linz to 








Constantinople. 






Year, 




Travellers. 


Goods. 


River. 


Sea 


Total. 


1835 


4 


1 


5 


17.717 


Tons. Cwt. 


1836 


5 


2 


7 


29,203 




1837 


7 


3 


10 


47,436 




1838 


9 


5 


14 


74,584 


16,030 14 


1839 


10 


7 


17 


105,926 


17,449 3 


1840 


10 


7 


17 


125,293 


18,434 3 


1841 


15 


7 


22 


170,078 


25,678 16 



This scene of growing intercourse, where all formerly was so 
still and solitary ; this creation of traffic and of travelling, which 
will ultimately make the Danube the great medium between Ger- 
many and the East, which nature seems to have intended, is owing 
to the enterprise of our own countrymen, Messrs. Pritchard and 
Andrews, and that, according to the statement of Mr. Andrews to 
myself, without that decided co-operation of the Austrian nobles 
which Murray in his Hand-Book has given them credit for. It is^y 
'Mr. Andrews again who has introduced steam on the Elbe, between 
Dresden and Prague — a scheme at first laughed to scorn by tha 
Germans, but now traversed by them by thousands and tens of 
i thousands every summer with the greatest delight, passing through 
the heart of the beautiful Saxon Switzerland. England has also 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 3()3 

started the little vessel on the Tr aim see, besides furnishing en- 
gineers and engines, and all practical information for those railways 
which are now shooting out their giant ramifications all over Ger- 
many, and thence into France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Russia. 

7. VIENNA. 

Es giebt nur eine Kaiser-stadt 
Giebt nur ein Wien. 

Such are the words of a gay song, playing in good-humoured 
banter on the pride of the Austrians in their joyous capital. 'There 
is only one Imperial city, only one Vienna/ And in truth, as Vienna 
was long the capital of the German empire, so it still continues the 
most of a capital of any city in the country. In population itself, 
as the head of an empire of greater extent and population than 
any other kingdom or state of Germany; in wealth, in majesty of 
aspect, in bustle, in pleasure, in everything, there is but one Kaiser- 
stadt ; there is but one Wien. It is the Paris of Germany, the\ 
gay city of perpetual pleasure. Music, the dance, play or opera, 
crowding to public gardens, pouring out in thousands to resorts of 
amusement and jollity all round the city — these constitute the greajj; 
features of life at Vienna. The Viennese, gay, good-humoured, 
kind-hearted, and hospitable, remind you irresistibly of Homer's 
description of the Pheaceans and their tastes. 

All day they feast, all day the bowls flow round, 
And joy and music through the land resound. 

The city is great and compact, that is, so far as it is included 
within the walls, while far around there is an immense circle built 
upon, called the Vorst'adte, or suburbs, forming in segments 
radiating from the centre of the city, six and thirty in number. 
The city itself is still surrounded by its lofty walls and broad moat. 
Without this moat lies a broad open space, called the Glacis, 
consisting of plots of grass divided by walks and roads, and by 
lines of trees; without this green open circle commences the Vor- 
st'adte. These are interspersed with gardens, public walks, churches, 
palaces, and theatres, so that as you walk round the ramparts, now 
converted into a public promenade surrounding the whole city, 
you behold within the city a dense mass of noble, though narrow 
streets, immense piles of princely buildings, and a crowding, 
bustling population. On the other hand, that is, outwardly, you 



364 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

overlook wherever you are, a more scattered, but wide-spread scene, 
as of an eastern city, with towers and domes, gardens and masses 
of trees, where the light-hearted people are collected to hear music, 
and render the heat tolerable with lemonade, sugar-water, ices, and 
such agreeable palliatives. The suburbs, in fact, form the much 
greater part of Vienna, of which the total population is now about 
half a million. 
» As you enter the streets of the city, you are surprised at the 

life and stir. Streams of well-dressed people are pouring along 
them; handsome carriages and equipages are seen driving as 
rapidly as in London ; the shops present brilliant fronts ; cafes in 
open places project their cool awnings, and set out their scores of 
chairs for luxurious smokers; all is motion, life, splendour, and 
crowds ; and you feel for the first time since you left London, as 
if you were once more in a great capital. You are made sensible 
too how far east you have got, and in the chief city of what a 
variously compounded empire you are. Picturesque groups of 
foreigners are seated at the doors of various coffee-houses and hotels, 
and the throng in the streets is brightly variegated with the cos- 
tumes of Turks, Albanians, Tyrolese, Jews, Wallachians, Hunga- 
rians, Armenians, and Italians. The fronts of the shops painted 
with bright figures in fresco or in oil, as signs by which they are 
known, as inns are by theirs, add also to the gaiety of appearance. 
\ Many of these full-length figures are excellently executed, and 

would do great credit to a frame in a handsome house, besides 
that they present you strikingly with various costumes. There are 
Die Schw'abische Jungfrau, Die Konigin von England, Die Hof- 
- Dame, Die scheme Circascien, etc. 

< There is no capital in Europe of the same extent in which so 
much of what you want to visit, so many of the resorts of business or 
amusement, of literary or scientific institutions, are set down so near 
together. Palaces, theatres, houses of the nobility, libraries, collec- 
tions of subjects of natural history, of arms, trophies, and jewellery, 
institutions for the education and assistance of its citizens, stand 
thickly, all within a very moderate space. The finest collections of 
works of art and of armour, with some palaces of the nobility, it is 
true, lie in the suburbs; but the Imperial Palace, the University, 
the Arsenal, the Treasure Chamber, the principal theatres and 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 365 

churches, lie within the walls. Within the walls too, reside the 
highest classes chiefly; and wherever you go you obtain views of 
vast hotels of the nobles, built round courts, the splendour of which 
in a great measure is lost in the general view of the city, but which 
surprise you wherever you come upon them. In point of the 
general architecture of the houses, there is no city in Germany 
that can at all compare with Vienna. I do not mean exactly in 
purity of style, but in a general stateliness of effect. Extensive 
streets in all directions present the finest and loftiest frontages, 
giving you a lively idea of the substantial character of the place ; 
though, owing to the city having been built within certain limits, 
those of the walls, the streets are generally narrow, and thus much 
of the effect of its excellent houses is lost. 

In point of paving, lighting, driving, and public vehicles, there 
is no German city which comes anything near it. It is the only 
one indeed, which gives yon a feeling of style and thorough activity. 
The streets are admirably paved, which we cannot say of any other 
German city with which I am acquainted. They are paved with 
a hard stone cut in regular cubes of six or eight inches. These 
are laid down in a masterly manner, so that the whole is firm, 
perfectly level, and without flaws and hollows. The carriages can 
therefore be driven as rapidly as in London, a very unusual, and 
we may say, unique sight in Germany. The carriages of the 
nobility and gentry are handsome, and drawn by excellent horses. 
There is a compactness, a style, an elegance about them to which 
you are nowhere else accustomed in this country. The fiacres are 
good and clean; and the city chariots, or flies, as we should -call 
them, the Stadtlohnkutsche, are by far the brightest and hanu- 
somest things to be seen, perhaps on the whole Continent. They 
would do credit to private gentlemen, are well horsed, and are 
driven by well-dressed coachmen in livery. In these you may go 
from one end of the city to the other for about ninepence English. 

The worst of Vienna streets is, that they have no trottoirs. 
They are paved perfectly level, directly across from house to house, 
without any line of demarcation between the foot-passengers and 
the drivers ; and this in streets which are at once narrow and 
crowded, and where the driving is so rapid, is no trifling nuisance. 
In fact, in no city do you seem in such perpetual peril of being run 



366 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

over. The middle of the streets is occupied with carts, wagons, 
drays, stellwagens, a sort of omnibus, or whatever is in motion on 
wheels. The people, walking on each side, get along as well as 
they can. The carriages, driving at full speed, make their way on 
this side and on that of the human throng. They cannot move 
carts and wagons, but they can move people, or run over them. 
Without stop or stay, therefore, on they whirl, and the people rush 
here and there to avoid them. As you are advancing, you hear a 
horrid groan — the sign of warning given by these hackney or other 
coachmen — behind you. You turn to see what is coming, and to make 
your escape how and whither you can, as all else are endeavouring 
to do. But while you are looking at the danger behind, you are 
assailed by dangers before; carriages coming that way, or what 
are more unrelenting still, wheelbarrows. These humble vehicles, 
which cannot pretend to match their dignity and momentum with 
carts, wagons, drays, or coaches, steer therefore directly down what 
should be the trottoirs, i.e. down the middle of the stream of 
people. There is no remedy for it; they must go somewhere; and 
while the coachman's hoarse groan makes you turn your head, ten 
to one but you are as suddenly called to guard against the perils 
in front by the rude shock of a wheelbarrow trundled against your 
shins. Under these circumstances, there is no attempt of the 
people at giving and taking the right hand, which so much facili- 
tates walking in London ; and, indeed, this simple custom has been 
introduced by the Germans into none of their streets, though it 
has been adopted on some of their bridges. You have, therefore, 
literally to fight your way along the crowd, some of whom are 
going your own way, and others of whom are steering directly in 
your face, and all of whom are in momentary jeopardy from lum- 
bering drays, flying carriages, invading wheelbarrows, and here and 
there scaffolding, which occupies half the street, and throws you at 
a critical moment upon the very crush of vehicles and the struggles 
of the flying people. What is still worse, you have to encounter 
every hundred yards or so, in the greatest and most narrow 
thoroughfares, heaps of firewood thrown down in front of the 
houses, and men busy sawing and chopping them up. It is 
perfectly amazing that in such a city as Vienna such a nuisance as 
this should be tolerated, when it admits of so easy a remedy. It 



GERMAN CTTIES AND SCENERY. 367 

is only to have this firewood cut up of the proper size for burning 
at the timber-yards where they purchase it. It would be just as 
well measured in that state, and would need nothing but to be shot 
down and conveyed immediately into the houses. It is very likely 
that this simple idea has never occurred to them, but it probably 
may in the course of another century or two. 

Owing to these causes, English ladies have generally a great 
aversion to walk through the streets of Vienna, that is, of those of 
the city; for the suburbs, or Vorst'adte, have plenty of space, with 
green fields, gardens, and planted walks, though the suburban 
streets are often in windy weather intolerable from dust. 

In point of situation, Vienna is one of the most beautifully and 
healthily located in Germany. It is true that it is lost, by about 
a couple of miles, to the main stream of the Danube. The stream 
from which it takes its name, the Wien, is, in fact, the city sink, 
black as ink, in summer scarcely covering its bed, and of no agree- 
able odour. Luckily it flows at some distance from the best part 
of the city, and a broad branch of the Danube sweeps under its 
walls. The city itself lies on a sloping ground, at the feet of a 
beautiful and lofty range of hills, at the back of which flows the 
Danube, and which terminates on the banks of the stream at some 
little distance below the city. With the noble background of these 
mountains, and sloping down into a vast plain, part of which near 
the city is covered with the thick woods of the Prater, nothing can 
be more advantageous or healthy than the position of this capital. 
The hills as they stretch away for twenty miles or more towards 
Neustadt, are extremely varied; covered here and there still with 
large tracts of forest intersected with rustic valleys, ruined towers 
and pilgrim shrines standing on the heights, but at their feet, and 
in their most beautiful recesses, lying populous villages, full of 
charming villas and gardens, the resort in summer of the merchants, 
citizens, and nobles. In this direction you have Baden with its 
baths and resorts of pleasure, the Brief, Schbnbrunn, Hitzing, 
Hiitteldorf, Lachsenburg, and nearer the city, Kloster-Neuburg, 
the Kahlenberg, Dornbach, and similar places. On the plain below 
the city, and lying along the banks of the Danube, the Prater, or 
park of Vienna, stretches its shades, and offers a variety of enjoy- 
ments to the citizens. We shall speak more particularly of these 



368 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

as we notice the great feature of Vienna, — its love of amusement 
and social enjoyment. 

To a stranger, this life of pleasure seems the great business of 
the place. The moment you come down to breakfast in the morn- 
ing you find on your table opera and play bills, and announcements 
of concerts and dances on all sides. Strauss will be in the Volks- 
garten; Lanner, at Sperls; Staudigl and Lutzer and Hassel Bart, 
at the Opera; Schultz is going to act one of his most amusing 
characters at the Volks Theatre in the Vorstadt Leopold. There 
will be a dance at the Birne, or fireworks in the Prater. When 
you set out to go into the city, you find on the walls large frames 
of wood, within which alone posting-bills are allowed to be exhibited, 
and which announce to you these and other pleasures. 

The great place of evening out-of-door resort is the Volks- 
garten. This is nearly opposite to the Imperial Palace. As you 
issue from the gateway which passes under the palace itself, you 
have at some distance before you the new Burg Thor, a Doric 
gateway, supported on twelve massy pillars, and standing in a 
broad open space with striking effect. Right and left extend 
planted walks and gardens; beyond it are seen the lofty ranges of 
new buildings in the Vorstadt Joseph; gay equipages are driving 
to and fro; gay people walking; and the whole scene is lively and 
charming in no common degree. On your right lies the Volks- 
garten, an extensive pleasure scene, with groves and seats; a temple 
of Theseus, built after the model of that in Athens, and containing 
Canova's group of Theseus killing the Centaur. Here you see the 
people enjoying themselves to the utmost. Nurses are here with 
children; mothers amidst theirs; family groups are seated under 
the trees, the ladies knitting and chattering to their hearts' content; 
while others are roaming about, gazing on the noble figure of 
Theseus, or diving iuto the vaults beneath it, in which are preserved 
various relics of ancient art. 

But within a space enclosed with a slight fence stands the 
great centre of Viennese evening out-of-door splendour and attrac- 
tion. This is a cafe, built in a semi-circle, with a musical orchestra 
in front. Here, in an evening, Strauss or Lanuer, with a powerful 
band, is sure to be found several times in the week, and the gayest 
portion of the people of Vienna is assembled to hear, to see, and be 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 3G9 

seen. The rooms of the cafe are fronted with large plate-glass 
windows, all looking towards the orchestra, and are splendidly fitted 
up and offering coffee, ices, supper, what you will. Other tables 
are set out in front, and before them several rows of chairs along 
the whole semi-circle, where are to be seen seated the most fashion- 
able and lovely women of Vienna. The scene is indescribably gay 
and brilliant. The beauty of the spot, the taste and splendour of 
the buildings, the crowds of handsomely-dressed people listening to 
the finest strains of the most celebrated modern masters, under 
the broad and intensely blue sky, with the woody masses of the 
gardens in the foreground, through which you spy throngs of 
listening people, closing in umbrageously the charmed scene, or 
letting only glimpses of the long and lofty piles of the palace peep 
over them, to remind you that you are still within a few hundred - 
yards of the crowding city, present altogether a spectacle of great 
happiness, taste, and fashion, such as would astonish our country- 
men to come upon in St. James's Park or Kensington Gardens. 

All this rational enjoyment is purchased for a few kreutzers, ,some 
threepence or fourpence, and can indeed be very well heard by the 
multitude in the outer portions of the garden; yet there is no 
rudeness, and the only thing which in some degree decreases the 
full enjoyment of the music, is the perpetual walking round the 
orchestra and in front of the cafe of a crowd, which though its 
shuffle of feet and passing of heads between you and the orchestra 
might very well be dispensed with, yet makes up the disadvan- 
tage, by presenting you with a great variety of figures, faces, and 
dresses, with no few bits of coquetry and flirtation. The concert 
commences about half-past six, and is over by about half-past nine. 
The Viennese are much divided in their preference of Strauss 
or Lanner. For my part, the difference of their music struck me 
much like the difference of their persons. Strauss, though by no 
means a handsome man, is gentlemanly, animated, and intellectual- 
looking. He presides over bis band like a man conscious of 
mastery in his profession, and full of the enthusiasm of it. All 
with him is clear, graceful, intelligible, and effective. Lanner is 
a person of middle height, and of a somewhat genuine German 
thickness; a great contrast in all respects to Strauss. He has the 
look of a man that has risen out of the mass without much educa- 

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370 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

tion, and that has never been able to fling off the half-sheepish 
rusticity of his early position. There is nothing bold and self- 
possessed about him. He looks half constrained and half undeter- 
mined, and his music, to my taste, partakes much of these qualities. 
Strauss, if he never gives you deep sentiment, or carries you into 
the sublime, is always full of fire, life, and meaning. Lanner is 
rich in rapid transitions, fine flourishes, and achievements of miracles 
of artistic cleverness; but there is a want of clearness, of feeling, of 
inspiration. You wonder, but are not excited. You find no master 
idea. There is no creative power which, communicating itself to 
your imagination and heart, opens within you whole regions of 
romance and poetry, and makes the sounds you hear the voices of 
so many passionate beings, bewailing their sorrows, or singing 
forth their triumphs and their joys. To more scientific persons 
I leave the decision of this great Viennese musical question; I only 
record the impression which the rival compositions made upon my 
own mind. 

This, though the chief source of evening out-of-door resort, is 
only one amongst very many. The Augarten in the Leopoldstadt 
and the Garden of the Water-glacis, before the Karolinen Thor, have 
as frequently their music, are still more frequented by the million, 
and, on particular occasions, by the fashionable. But these are 
only the scenes of such gaiety belonging to the public at large: 
there are scores of others at Gasthauses, or large hotels, in the 
suburbs or open parts, which are built and fitted with a view to this 
object, as well as to other popular Belustigungen, or pleasure- 
makings. Hele is an ample court, overshadowed with trees, under 
which you find tables set, and lamps hung from their boughs. 
People in friendly or family groups are there - seated; a band is 
playing; Strauss and Lanner are in every-day requisition, and 
numerous other bands, military or belonging to different musical 
Vereine, so as to supply all these places. You see their different 
engagements puffed and posted everywhere daily. The principal 
of these places are Sperls in the Leopoldstadt, where Strauss is 
"generally engaged; the Goldene Birne in the Landstrasse, Lanner's 
resort; Zum Zeisig, Zum Steidl, the Seitzer Hof, the J'agerhorn, 
the Zwei Traubcn, etc. Here supper and ices are eaten, and 
dancing goes on with wonderful rapidity. In some of these places, 



GERMAN OITTES AND SCENERY. 371 

the servant girls, milliner girls, and youths out of offices and shops, 
come to dance, and are neatly dressed and well behaved. People 
of various ranks sit and sup, or stand around and watch the 
dancing. It is amazing to see the enthusiasm and perseverance 
with which these young people waltz away; the same couples often 
going down every dance in succession, round those enormous great 
saloons, from seven in the evening till ten or twelve. Vienna is 
noted for its violent dancing, and equally for the predominance of 
consumption, and when you have seen young delicate girls flying 
round these huge halls with very little pause for so many hours, 
excessively heated, eating ices, drinking wine or other liquids, and 
afterwards going home through the chill air of midnight, you are 
sure that such results are inevitable. 

But to give a perfect idea of the perpetual round of pleasure 
in this gay metropolis, we must take a brief glance at the annual 
circle of what may be called its public life. 

In October, the officers of state, the middle classes, and all 
such whose engagements do not allow them to make very distant 
excursions or long absences, return from their country sojourn, and 
the city becomes alive. The promenade on the ramparts between 
the Burg and Stuben Thor, and in the Graben and Kohlmarkt, 
are at noon, and continue through the whole winter, the grand 
meeting points of the elegant world. On All-Souls day begin 
the musical entertainments with a military requiem in the church 
of St. Augustine. The first concert is that of the Musik-Verein. 
The public gardens are deserted, and the Gasthauses are opened 
for Reunions and evening entertainments. As the season advances 
the nobility pour in faster, the theatres contend in rivalry of novel- 
ties with each other; public concerts multiply, and auctions of 
books and works of art. The reminiscences of the summer wan- 
derings become the theme of the soirees; dances and cards once 
more become the general bond of the evening parties. Advent 
passes quickly over ; but Christmas is every year more festively 
celebrated. Christmas-trees are not only erected in private and 
family circles, but in great companies by subscription, and some- 
times a few thousand gulden are spent on them and their accom- 
paniments. Exemption tickets are given in every parish for a 
trifling alms to the poor, which prevents any clerical visits during 

B B % 






372 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

that period. With the new-year generally come snow and sledg- 
ing parties ; but as the snow does not last long, not much is com- 
monly expended on these. In January begins the Fasching, and 
the streets are full of bills of public balls ; but he who accounts 
himself a member of the elegant world attends no public ball; the 
gentlemen only go and sup there. The Court, which loves nothing 
less than parade, gives only chamber balls, and it is generally the 
ambassadors who give great Carnival Feasts and Costume Balls. 
The Thes-dansans are the general mode, where no great supper is 
given, but refreshments only are handed about, and which break 
up at midnight. The great point of union is the masquerade on 
the last Thursday and on Fasten-Tuesday, when from three to five 
thousand persons in fullest dress drive each other round. Dancing 
at a masquerade there is none. The ladies only, for the most part, 
mask, and that as simply as possible. Every year masking becomes 
less frequent, less in repute, and except in the masquerades, all 
masking is forbidden. 

The middle classes frequent the so-called Society-balls, which 
under various names, as the Ball of Flora, of Fortune, etc., are 
given in the Gasthauses. On Sundays these saloons are chiefly 
occupied by the lower orders. In them all the most splendid 
music is heard. Strauss and Lanner produce fresh pieces for the 
opening of each season, and these are immediately seized and 
played everywhere. 

Thus Carnival rushes triumphantly to a close ; but even Lent 
is not without its solaces. It is the grand season of music. Con- 
certs of all kinds abound. The people have a peculiar music feast 
of their own. All the great dancing saloons are suddenly converted 
into eating halls, in which what are called evening musical enter- 
tainments are given. The orchestras play alternately with marches, 
overtures, potpourris, and quodlibets, in original style, their newest 
dances, the most popular of which are received with immense 
applause und clapping of hands. Eating, drinking, shouting for 
joy, ring through the saloons till midnight, by which time the 
orchestra, the lights, the people, are all wrapped in one compact 
cloud of tobacco smoke. Meantime the elegants frequent the riding- 
school, the Ball-house, etc., where entertainments after their taste 
are given. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 373 

Easter approaches, and with Charwoche, the week preceding 
it, great church festivals. On Holy Thursday the Emperor washes 
the feet of twelve poor men — the Empress those of twelve poor 
women. The visiting of the holy sepulchres, especially that of 
St. Stephanas cathedral, which is highly adorned, brings all Vienna 
on its knees ; the most striking masses of lamentation are cele- 
brated, and the throng and tumult in the streets present a singular 
spectacle. Strangers wonder at the rapidity with which the multi- 
tude move, and yet avoid one another, especially at the confluence 
of crossing streets. All is hurry and crush, and yet all security, 
for seldom at this time do accidents occur. On the Saturday, the 
Resurrection of Christ is celebrated in every parish with a proces- 
sion round the church, and those of the Imperial chapel and St. 
Stephan, in which the Imperial court joins, attract great attention. 

On Easter Monday, all the places of amusement are re-opened. 
On this day, at noon, the Prater is in its highest glory; and 
except in London, there is no such scene in any capital of Europe. 
The Prater, indeed, is opened on the first of April, but it is ton 
in the world of fashion, that on this day all should ride or drive 
through the Prater who can, whether in their own carriages or on 
their own steeds, or with hired ones; and those who can do neither, 
go on foot, to see the spectacle. Here, then, through the great 
alley of this noble park extends the dense procession of equipages 
of all kinds, forming a line often of not much less than six miles, 
from the Graben, in the city, to the Umkehr, or circle of trees in 
the Prater, where the cavalcade wheels round to return. Here is 
every equipage, from that of the Emperor to the dusty hired calash 
that the city contains. This strangely mingled train takes the 
great highway towards the Lusthaus, while the riders take the 
alley on its right hand, and the foot people that on the left. Not 
a person is allowed to move from the ranks; and yet all is so 
orderly that the very deer gaze on the multitude, often of twenty 
thousand people, from the cross alleys and under the trees, and 
never move. 

In the Wurstel Prater, or, literally, Sausage Prater, as it is 
called, the common people are equally in their glory. Here they 
have permanent buildings, in which roundabouts, puppet-shows, 
slight-of-hand theatres, and all the various shows to be found at 



374 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

fairs, are regularly established the summer through. There are, 
too, coffee-houses and beer-houses, which are full of customers. All 
under the trees crowds are sitting and lying. It is one vast scene 
of merriment, feasting, and popular rejoicing. The Prater, indeed, 
is the spot where Vienna life may be seen at a glance, from its 
highest step to its lowest; the people in the Wurstel Prater, and 
the genteel world in the alleys. 

At the end of April, horse races, introduced in 1826, are to 
be seen; but May comes, and all is pleasure! On May-day, at six 
o'clock in the morning, in the Prater, occur what are called Das 
Wettrennen der herrschaftlichen Laufer, or gentlemen foot-races, 
where a dozen gentlemen, or their deputies, run for prizes, which 
are then given to a charitable institution. Formerly, some of the 
princes took part in them. Towards noon, all the world of fashion 
resorts to the Augarten, in whose grand alley the youth and beauty 
of Vienna make their most brilliant display. From this period the 
gardens of the suburbs become gay. The gardens of the great 
Gasth'auser are opened so soon as it is warm enough to eat in the 
open air. In the evenings the city walls become the great 
promenades. 

On Corpus-Christi day, a grand procession is made, in which 
all the clergy, the Emperor and Empress, or some princes of the 
blood, the court, and the guard join. Except in Rome, where the 
Pope goes in procession to St. Peters, or in Munich, nowhere is 
a more gorgeous or gay spectacle seen than this of this day in 
Vienna. The guards, in their splendid uniforms; the streets, 
boarded for the procession to walk on; brilliant carpets and tapestry 
hung from the windows, and flowers strewn on the ground, with 
the vast crowds and the music — nothing can be more striking. 
This is considered to close the season. The nobles hasten to their 
country estates, or to travel, and the life of the city is chiefly 
derived from the gaiety of the people and the throng of passing 
strangers. 

In July, the people hold their Volks-fest in the Brigitten-au, 
or meadow of St. Bridget, as the feast commences in her day. 
The Brigitten-au is a fine meadow adjoining the Augarten, where 
booths, temporary theatres, dancing arbours, jugglers' shows, and 
all the machinery of the people's pleasures are erected. From 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 375 

forty to eighty thousand people are reckoned to assemble here, 
and to give thernelves up to unbounded play and fun. It is the 
wildest chaos of headlong enjoyment, of singing, dancing, leaping in 
sacks, laughing, crowding, and noise imaginable; and yet all in the 
best possible humour — the unfailing characteristic of the Viennese. 

Such is the gay life of Vienna, in hall and garden, in Gasthaus 
and Sausage Prater; but even here we have not included some of 
its perpetual and fixed sources of pleasure — its theatres. These 
are five in number; the Opera-house, by the K'arntner Thor; the 
Burg or Court theatre, where Staudigl, Mademoiselle Hassel-Bart, 
and Mademoiselle Lutzer, whose names are all well known in Eng- 
land, play and sing with a joyous and masterly spirit, which draws 
incessant crowds; the Theatre an der Wien, where, if you do not 
always find good acting, you behold the most gorgeous and un- 
rivalled spectacle, in which five hundred persons and fifty horses 
frequently appear; and the theatres in the Joseph Stadt, and the 
Leopold Stadt, in which, and especially in the last, you have the 
life of Vienna, in the Viennese dialect (and not in the broad Aus- 
trian, as often represented), with all its humours, admirably hit off. 

But all these sources do not satiate; nay, do not even satisfy 
the pleasure-loving soul of Vienna. On all holidays and Sundays, 
by railways and carriages of all sorts, they rush forth in thousands 
on thousands, to those charming retreats in the mountains of 
which I have spoken. To spread themselves through the quaint 
but beautiful gardens of Schbnbrunn; to the splendid cassino of 
Dommeyer at Hitzing; to the baths of Baden, and the dinners 
eaten under orchard trees in the lovely valley of Helen; to climb 
into the forests, and amongst the ruined castles; to drive into the 
ravine of the Teufels Miihle, or the deepest shades of the woods of 
Grinzing. All these places have accommodations for their recep- 
tion and refreshment; and there the swarming thousands of the 
city, with their families, find never-wearying enjoyment. 

The space which we have been compelled to give to the amuse- 
ments of Vienna, as its grand characteristic, need not, however, 
make us entirely overlook its wealth of art and its many institutions 
and collections of various kinds, of the greatest value. The visitor 
will find abundant objects of interest to occupy his attention for 
months. Amongst its churches, St. Stephan's alone is one which 



376 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

claims his admiration from all points, and every time he passes it. 
From a distance, its tower is the master feature of the city; far 
above all other towers and domes it rears its tapering height into 
the sky, and has a character which is so unique, that the moment 
you see Vienna in the distant landscape, or in a picture, you thereby 
recognise it. It is a gradually tapering tower, approaching almost 
to a spire, built with lessening arch upon arch; said to be the 
strongest in Europe, and yet its massiveness so concealed by pyra- 
midical pinnacles and crockets, that nothing can look more light. 
Its height indeed, 428 feet, and beautiful proportion, give it 
necessarily this air. The body of the church itself, built in 1144, 
is a noble specimen of the old German ecclesiastical architecture. 
Wherever viewed, from without or within, its size, its loftiness, noble 
pillars, ample space, tall windows, and all accompanying embellish- 
ments, equally inspire admiration. Its time-darkened mass is seen 
to good effect in the clear moonlight of this climate; and the 
Emperor Francis, by clearing away all obstructing buildings, has 
laid open its beauties to observation. It stands in the centre of 
the city, and the busiest thoroughfare passes its west end; so that 
strangers must daily pass and repass, and may just as well go 
through it, as it is nearly always open; and the music, chanting, 
and pomp of mass, its splendid old painted windows, its large 
pictures and altar-pieces, its numerous images and monuments, 
amongst them that of the famous Prince Eugene, and above all, the 
various groups of its perpetual worshipers, are matters of agreeable 
notice as you walk in from the bustle of the city, and pause in its 
cool shade from the heat without. You see here, amid all the 
gaiety and pleasure of this city, how Catholic devotion and Catholic 
superstition are ever actively at work. Before the door stand 
plenty of vendors of little prayers and tapers, with whole baskets- 
full of their wares. On the walls are plastered numerous advertise- 
ments of the setting out of Gesellschafts-wagen, conveyances half 
omnibus half caravan, on certain days, with pilgrims to Maria 
Zell, the most celebrated pilgrim shrine in Austria — that of the 
Black Virgin. It is upwards of eighty English miles from Vienna, 
yet every week through the summer whole loads of devotees set 
out. The pilgrimage in one of these conveyances requires about 
five days to go and return, though travellers can now, by means of 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 377 

the Wien-Raaber railway, if they wish to see this Austrian Loretto, 
make less than two suffice. 

Amongst the places well worthy of inspection, are the Imperial 
Palace, which may be seen at stated times, and which, immense 
as it is, yet gives to Englishmen many pleasing evidences of the 
simplicity of life of the Austrian sovereigns; the palace of the 
Archduke Charles, famous for its vast and almost unrivalled collec- 
tion of prints and drawings; the Jewel Office, containing the 
regalia of Charlemagne, and many jewels, costumes, and articles 
connected with the most interesting persons and epochs of Austrian 
history; the Cabinets of Antiquities, Natural History, and Minerals, 
all very rich, but the latter one of the finest in the world, and most 
curious were it only for its collection of thunderbolts or meteoric 
stones, some of them of immense weight, and having one side 
polished so as to shew their substance, which is quite metallic. 
The extensive and affluent mining districts included in the empire 
— Hungary, Siebenbergen, the Bannat, Bohemia, Moravia, Steier- 
mark, K'arnten, Salzburg, and the Tyrol — have not only enabled 
three successive emperors to enrich beyond comparison this collec- 
tion with most splendid specimens of ores and stones, but enrich 
it still more by exchange with other countries, as Saxony, the 
Harz, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Russia, England, and 
America, North and South. The Imperial Library and the Arsenals 
are full of objects of the highest interest. Institutions for public 
and private instruction of various kinds abound; amongst those for 
the alleviation of human suffering, the lover of his species will find 
a visit to the hospitals of the Barmherzige Briider, and Schwester, 
the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, not the least gratifying. They 
are situated not far from each other in the Leopold-stadt. Here 
he will see monks and nuns employed in those works of mercy, to 
which had their orders always devoted themselves, neither Luther 
nor Henry VIII., nor the recent Spanish Liberals, could any more 
have driven them out of their hauuts, than they could chase the sun 
and moon from the sky. Here they will see Christianity in its true 
shape; not musing in cells or in deserts on mere inward feelings 
and fancies, but actually soothing the pains of the poor, and pour- 
ing Samaritan oil into the wounds of the afflicted. These insti- 
tutions are supported by subscriptions. Some of the monks go 






) 



378 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

round and beg for them, while others attend the patients. Some 
are regularly educated in medicine and surgery, for the proper 
discharge of their duties. To see the neatness, the cleanness, the 
comfort of the patients, and the kind attention of the brothers and 
sisters to their several charges, is truly affecting, and does the 
heart good. 

In collections of armour and paintings Vienna is affluent. The 
galleries of the Belvidere Palaces, and those of the Princes Ester- 
hazy and Lichstenstein in particular, are truly worthy of so great 
a city. Having heard comparatively little of the galleries of Vienna 
compared with those of Munich and Dresden, we were proportion- 
ably astonished and delighted. What renders these galleries more 
agreeable is, that they are situated in the suburbs, in the midst 
of extensive and delicious gardens, freely open to the public. To 
mention even the most remarkable of the paintings in these galleries 
would form a catalogue; it may suffice to say, that besides ancient 
armour, Grecian and Egyptian antiquities, etc., the Belvidere 
gallery is an immense collection of the works of all the best 
schools, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, German. Here are some of 
the very best productions of Titian and Rubens : amongst those of 
the former, the famous Ecce Homo; and of the latter, Ignatius 
Loyola casting out Devils, and St. Francis Xavier preaching to the 
Indians, curing the sick and raising the dead amongst them, 
besides his Helena Forman stepping into a Bath, and the Feast of 
Venus — works in which he has displayed more feeling of beauty 
and grace than are his general wont. The Lichstenstein Palace 
lies low and retired in its woody garden; on the contrary, the two 
Belvidere Palaces stand aloft and conspicuous, overlooking the 
city. They lie one at the bottom and the other at the top of a 
great and airy garden; but the most noble building is the one on 
the brow of the hill. It is this which contains the grand assem- 
blage of paintings; is in itself a splendid palace, with a superb 
marble entrance hall, and giving such views from its windows 
of the whole wide-stretching city as a Canaletto only could do 
justice to. 

Such is the faintest possible allusion to the many objects of 
high interest and of artistic wealth which the Austrian capital 
contains, and to which the most free and gratuitous admission is 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 379 

given. But there is one little relic still uninentioned, which all 
travellers shew a curiosity to see. It is the Stock im Eisen, or 
Trunk in Iron; i.e. the trunk of a tree which stood here when the 
Wiener Wald, or Old Forest of Vienna, reached to this spot; and 
accordingly, next to St. Stephanas church, it is regarded as the 
greatest antiquity of the place. It is bound by iron bands to the 
wall of a house in the street a little above St. Stephan's church. 
Upon it hangs a lock, said to have been made by an apprentice 
whom his master upbraided with want of skill. In his wrath he 
called on the Devil for help, and by his assistance made this lock, 
which he challenged any one to open before his return. He then 
set off on his years of Wanderschaft, but never again re-appeared, 
nor from that day to this has any one been able to make a key that 
will open it. Very probably it was never intended to be opened. 
Be that as it may, there it hangs, and has drawn so much interest 
of the locksmiths' apprentices about it, that every one who comes 
to the city drives a nail into the stem, which is now so completely 
covered with nail heads, that it is quite cased in iron, and leaves 
but little possibility of fresh additions. 

There is another thing in the neighbourhood of Vienna which 
few travellers see, and which is mentioned in no guide-book or 
travels that I have seen: it is the wild-boar park of the Emperor 
at Hiittelsdorf, beyond Hitzing. The park lies in a retired spot 
amongst the hills. A forest of old and noble oaks covering miles 
of hill and dale, and giving a fine feeling of sylvan solitude and 
obscurity. It is the fitting haunt of the old German wild-boar, 
and in it range nearly two thousand head of wild swine, great and 
small. The park is the favourite resort of the Imperial family, and 
therefore is strictly closed to the public; a fact which may account 
for its being so little known. Hearing by accident of it, I deter- 
mined, if possible, to obtain a sight of so fine a herd of wild swine, 
and with an English friend, proceeded thither in the Stellwagen. 
The worthy old J'ager, however, on making application for admis- 
sion, shook his head, and pulled out of his desk a tremendous 
long document, containing the strictest Imperial prohibition to the 
admission of any one. Disappointed, but not daunted, we walked 
on to the park itself, a full mile farther up the country. There 
was a wildness and solitude in the tract around it which indicated 






380 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

its prohibited character. As we drew near its walls, a wilderness 
of trees and bushes on the banks of a stream that bore indications 
of occasional violence of torrents from the hills, made a sylvan 
scene, and before an old gate stood a soldier as sentinel, who, on 
observing us, drew stealthily back into the thicket, as if he would 
watch whether we attempted to enter. There was something in 
the act so suspicious, coupled with the profound solitude of the 
place, and the brooding extent of dark woods within the walls, 
that made us feel very strongly that a peculiar and jealous degree 
of Imperial strictness guarded this region. 

We traced a slight track under the wall till we came to another 
gate without a sentinel, and with an avenue leading to the house 
of the Forstmeister, in the park, to which we boldly advanced. 
It was a large and lonely-looking dwelling, worthy of the scene. 
Old-fashioned gardens and paddocks lay around it; a sort of 
summer-house, or look-out, old and grey, was set on the strong 
garden wall, and over the gateway was nailed a huge pair of antlers, 
the regular sign of the abode of the Forstmeister or Jager. We 
opened the door leading into the court-yard, but an immense dog 
walking loose there, induced us as speedily to close it again. Not 
a soul was to be seen. A silence and a solitude, as of enchantment, 
lay on all around. We pulled the chain of the old gateway-bell, 
and in a while a woman put her head out of an upper window, and 
demanded our business. "To speak with the Forstmeister," we 
replied. "Come in then," said she. "But the hound — is he 
safe ?" "No," said she, "he would pull you down in a moment, 
and without notice." 

On this agreeable intelligence we stood before the gate, very 
much in doubt whether any one would come to conduct us in, 
but at length the woman came, and under her escort, the hound 
permitted us to pass. We were then told to walk up stairs, and 
after rambling along a variety of great passages, and knocking at 
sundry doors, we found the worthy old Forstmeister smoking his 
pipe and counting his money. The old gentleman, a sturdy keeper- 
like looking personage, on propounding our request, cried, as in 
astonishment at the naming of such a thing, said " Ah Gott, nein ! 
das ist am strengsten verboten!" — that is most strictly forbidden. 
He again informed us that the Imperial family were particularly 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 381 

fond of this retirement, where they could range about at perfect 
freedom; that one or another were coming almost every day; that 
the Empress-mother had been there the day before, and that some 
one might now arrive at any moment. The case seemed hopeless, 
but we made one last assault on the national pride of the good 
man, with artillery which seldom fails in any part of the world. 
We said we regretted the circumstance, but that we were English 
gentlemen, who had heard much of the quantities of fine game in 
Austria, and had a great desire to see what the Emperor could 
boast of the famous old game of the country, the boar. The old 
man smiled. "They are a grand show," said he; "you'll find 
nothing like it anywhere;" and looking out of the window, as if to 
assure himself that no Imperial guests were at hand, he rung a bell, 
and a young man appeared. " Go," said he, " and let these 
English gentlemen have a peep at the wild swine." We returned 
our best acknowledgments and withdrew. 

The young man, a keeper, seemed a good-natured fellow. He 
took us up the park to a certain hollow, where various wild swine 
were to be seen under the trees around. This seemed to be the 
extent to which he deemed himself commissioned to go, but a couple 
of gulden put into his hand, extended his commission at once; 
the fears of Imperial edicts, and even of dinner waiting, a great 
event in daily life in all countries, seemed to vanish. We marched 
on; glade after glade of the old forest opened before us; he not 
only was ready to advance as far as we pleased, but assured us that 
in a few days would be a hunt, and that if we would come, he 
would take care to admit us. The sight, in fact, was worthy of the 
trouble we had taken. Numbers of wild swine, of all ages and 
sizes, from the grisly old boar to the sow with her troop of sucking 
pigs, were encountered on all sides. Here some grim old fellow, 
black as jet, or of a sun-burnt and savage grey, lay basking in the 
deep grass, and at our approach started up with a tremendous guff, 
and bolted into the woods. Others were seen lying at their length 
under the broad trees; others running with cocked tails, and at a 
most nimble rate. The sows with their young ones appeared the 
most savage and impatient of our presence. Others were so tame 
as to come at the whistle of the keeper, and scores ran voraciously 
as he shook one of the wild cornel trees which grew plentifully in 






38£ CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the forest. These trees, unknown in England, are as large as 
apple-trees, and in autumn are covered with fruit of a coral red, 
as large as cherries, but oblong. They make a beautiful show; 
and the fruit, of a fine sub-acid flavour, is used for dessert. The 
wild swine are prodigiously fond of this fruit, and as the trees were 
shook, and it pattered to the ground, they came running on all 
sides, and stood in the neighbouring thickets eager for our depar- 
ture, when they rushed forward and ravenously devoured it. 

The wild swine here, after all, must present but a faint idea of 
what they were in their ancient wilds. They are all of the true 
breed, and not for a moment to be confounded with the tame kind. 
The tusked mouth, the thick forequarter, the narrow hindquarter, 
the mane, the coarse bristles, the speed of gait, belong essentially 
to the wild breed: but in the old savage woods, where for years 
they encountered the sight of no single man; and for scores of 
years might live on in some obscure recess of these woods, they 
must have acquired a huge and savage monstrosity to which these 
park swine must appear in comparison, pigmy and tame. In the 
forests of Hanover and Westphalia, hunters yet tell us, that, in 
spite of the government orders to exterminate the swine in the open 
forests, on account of the mischief they do to the cultivated land, 
there are yet to be seen numbers as huge, and gaunt, and ferocious 
as ever. These will snuff the most distant approach of danger; 
and with terrific noises rush into the densest woods; or sur- 
rounding a solitary individual who is unarmed, especially a woman 
or a child, will scour round and round them, at every circle coming 
nearer, till bursting in upon them, they will tear them limb from 
limb and devour them; and that the tame swine which are herded 
in the forests, and become mixed in breed with the wild, acquire 
the same blood-thirsty propensity, and will, in their herds, surround 
and devour persons in the same manner. 

We quitted, as all travellers must, Vienna with great regret. 
Besides the immense number of things worthy of notice, the 
general spirit of the place is so gay and happy, that, however it 
may be to the constant resident, nothing to the temporary sojourner 
can be more agreeable. Every thing in the shape of amusement, 
the finest music and works of art, are on all hands offered to his 
attention; and in no part of the world are strangers received with 



GERMAN CTTIES AND SCENERY. 383 

more cordial kindness. In your inn, in public places, in private 
society, you feel the same spirit. Our hotel, the Golden Lamb, in 
the Vorstadt Leopold, a most convenient situation for all purposes, 
was, without exception, one of the most excellent and pleasant 
houses that we ever were in. The private rooms were airy, clean, 
and handsomely furnished; the chamber-maids, waiters, the land- 
lord, all seemed inspired with one desire, to make your abode 
there agreeable; and a constant assemblage of intelligent and very 
friendly people, often in whole family parties, from various quarters 
of the world, at the general table, made the sojourn there more 
like a visit in some wealthy house where foreigners are accustomed 
to meet, than at an inn. 

In public vehicles, nay, even sitting on a public seat, you find 
the same friendly and unrepulsive disposition amongst the very 
best classes; and we found it enough to be respectable English, 
often in this very manner, to begin an acquaintance of the most 
charming kind. Surely this could occur in no other capital in the 
world. The English language here, as in Hungary, is studied by 
the young with avidity. English literature is extensively read; 
and it is a real pleasure to the refined classes to converse with you 
on England, and its society, arts, and books. 

The ideas, too, which we cherish at home, that Austria is a 
gloomy and severe despotism; that you cannot move without a spy 
or policeman at your elbow, disappear here entirely. In no city 
do you see so little palpable evidence of surveillance and police 
as in this. You are, after delivering your passport, as free and 
unshackled in your motions as in London; and if you do not go 
out of your way to assail the government, the government will not 
interfere with you. The whole of this is, however, the result of a 
sagacious and worldly-wise political system. Every thing is planned 
and calculated to divert the thoughts of the people from political 
matters. For this purpose public and social pleasures are pro- 
moted. If poverty cannot wholly be prevented, for the state has a 
large debt, and pauperism in 1836 was stated to be in proportion 
of about four persons in the hundred, yet distress is alleviated; 
and in no country do you see less symptoms of it. The grand 
principle of despotic government is, indeed, and must be, to main- 
tain its people in comfort: without which no government could 



384 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

long be popular. Austria, therefore, educates, and was amongst 
the first nations of Europe to educate its people, so far as is 
necessary to the conduct of human affairs. The administration 
of justice is cheap. Law, unlike what it is with us, is within the 
reach of every man's purse; if not, the poorest man can seek 
justice from the highest quarters. Even the Emperor devotes one 
day every week to the personal hearing of any complaints that 
individuals, however humble, desire to lay before him. What 
would be thought of such a paternal practice in our own monarchs? 
Thus, even despotism has its sunny side. If a people can be 
content to leave the management of political affairs entirely in the 
Jiands of the government, and to eat, drink, and be merry, going 
through the world in great bodily comfort, Austria is an evidence 
that they'may do this in the highest degree. Compared with the 
frightful and wholesale distress of our own country, Austria is a 
paradise. Nowhere in the world can such frightful masses of 
misery be found as in our manufacturing districts; and well may 
the Austrian ask us, what good does our liberty of speech do those 
who purchase it at such a cost? 

Here the Imperial family is highly popular; the individual 
members of it, wherever seen, are most simple and unassuming in 
their manners ; the government is mild and paternal in its treat- 
ment of its subjects, and the whole population is gay and good- 
humoured. I do not mean to say that such a state is what the 
powers, spiritual impulses, and destiny of man, render most desir- 
able ; but for the mass it may well be asked, is it not better than 
lying for ever under the hydraulic press of crushing anxiety and 
fearful starvation ? There is no condition of ignominy so thoroughly 
ignominious as that of a people styling itself free, and yet living 
before the world in perpetual complaint of the wretchedness of its 
government, and in domestic misery which has no parallel. The 
argument is not for the preference of a despotism, but for a govern- 
ment like ours to rouse itself to determination not to be surpassed 
by despotism itself in diffusing comfort amid the multitude while 
it offers to all men, as its additional and crowning recommenda- 
tion, the glorious and precious privilege of unshackled mind — of 
religious, political, and intellectual freedom. 

It is very probable, that to the constant resident, not modelled 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 385 

by early habit to this gay and pleasure-streaming life, it might 
ultimately become wearisome ; but this the temporary visitor does 
not feel. He sees only around him smiling faces, happy looks, 
rejoicing multitudes, and rejoices himself in the charm of music, 
and the presence of so much social sunshine. But even the resident, 
when weary of dissipation, can withdraw to as much retirement as 
he pleases ; and if he possesses intellectual tastes, he will find wide 
circles here in which he will be at home. Vienna is the seat of 
a large university; and though Austria cannot boast of having 
produced, great men in anything like the proportion which distin- 
guishes other parts of Germany, it now possesses no mean amount 
of scientific and literary people. Amongst them, the distinguished 
orientalist Von Hammer; Grillparzer, the dramatist; Zedliz, the 
author of the Todtenkranz, and other poems; Caroline Pichler, the 
novelist; Nimpsch, and Count Auersperg, both the latter highly 
popular poets, writing under the assumed names of Nicolas Lenau 
and Anastatius Griin. 

In point of dress as well as manners, the Viennese depart 
much from the standard of other Germans. As in gaiety so in 
fashion, Vienna disdains to borrow from Paris, but sets up a style 
and mode of its own. The ladies wear much lower dresses, greatly 
to the scandal of their fair sisters of more primitive states, who, 
often blest with very little neck by nature, seem to take a pride in 
having none at all, setting up their shawls and pulling down their 
bonnets behind till their heads seem literally to stand on their 
shoulders. The freedom which fashion can introduce was curiously 
demonstrated while we were there. It was the rage for young- 
ladies to learn to swim ; and nothing was more common than in 
the baths near the Prater to see numbers of them coolly leaning 
over the handrails, and watching the young gentlemen swimming, 
who, except a pair of very short drawers, called Bad-hosen, were 
as unencumbered with dress as their father Adam when he first 
discovered himself after his creation. Yet in all else that relates to 
public decorum, what other great capital can compare to it ? Like 
all the German cities, whatever be the actual state of morals, the 
most complete public propriety is observed. Go when and where 
you will through the streets of German cities, all is orderly, and 
free from any object which can shock your humanity, or offend 

c c 



386 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

your sense of delicacy and moral purity. How long will it be 
before we can say so of any street, or almost any hour, of London ? 

8. JOURNEY TO PRAGUE. 

We took our places in the eilwagen to Prague, the ancient 
capital of Bohemia ; and on passing out of the gates of Vienna at 
five o' clock in the morning, beheld a sight which most strikiDgly 
exhibited the nuisance which stares one in the face wherever we 
go, from the imposition of tolls and duties. How continually has 
the traveller occasion to curse the spirit of monopoly and restric- 
tion ! and at every town-gate the poor countryman has to curse it 
too, as his corn bags are bored through and through with a great 
pointed iron, to see if he has concealed anything contraband in it. 
I never see well-dressed, otherwise decent, and often educated men 
degraded to gropers in trunks and reticules, to pulling out peoples 
dirty linen, and seizing on children's playthings to weigh them, 
and perhaps tax them to the amount of two farthings, but I pity 
them from my soul. Who does not heartily sigh for free trade as 
he sees a company of innocent and merry pleasure tourists arrested 
in the midst of some loveliest scenery; a whole steam-packet crowd 
of them brought to a stand, and all their carefully-packed articles 
ransacked by grave men in collarless coats and great moustachios; 
their neatly-folded clothes all turned topsy-turvy, as if the poor 
men were seeking something to eke out the deficiencies of their 
own dress; razors and lather-brushes tumbled out as if the 
solemn officials were really meditating shaving themselves; dirty 
linen, and handkerchiefs, and stockings, of ladies and gentlemen, 
brought out in foulest and most humiliating disorder, where there 
is neither washer nor laundry-maid at hand ; a hand-basket dived 
into that probably contains only a crumpled pocket-handkerchief, 
a few hotel bills, and a bit of plum-cake ; a poor man's little 
wallet, that has bread and cheese, a red herring, and a drop of 
brandy in it, — and all this to search for the dues of a mighty 
kingdom, out of which nothing comes but the trouble, and the fact of 
making honourable gentlemen and ladies look like so many thieves, 
and their poor searchers as unlucky rogues who take a delight in 
being nuisances! Call this piece of barbarism what you will, 
attempt to smooth it over as necessary and customary, — this is the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 387 

light and the feeling in which it never ceases to appear to your 
inward sense. 

Here was a most singular spectacle, occasioned by the old 
nuisance of city tolls. For more than three English miles was one 
dense train of peasants' wagons, loaded with all sorts of stuff for 
the market. Here they stood stock still in the road, one jammed 
close behind another, while a couple of officers were ascertaining 
the toll those at the head had to pay, and which did not seem 
speedily determined. The people in the rear could not expect in 
their turn to arrive at the gate in less than three or four hours, 
and probably had been as many already waiting. Some, indeed, 
were comfortably gone to sleep on their loads. 

Away now through Bohemia. Who would not envy our jour- 
ney across Bohemia ? That ancient kingdom, where so many 
stirring deeds have been done, and where legends and romance 
have led us to expect so much that is wild and peculiar ? The 
Bohemian forest, robber bands, old towns, wild glens and moun- 
tains filled with gipsies, and cobolds, and strange spirits ? Un- 
luckily, these attractive things, or the fame of them, lie in the 
skirts of Bohemia. Its mines, its mountains, and traditions, are in 
its borders : the greater part of Bohemia is a plain ; and over this 
plain we were bound to travel. He who expects to find the plain 
of Bohemia picturesque, might just as well expect to see the sea 
there, which Shakspeare talks of. It is all one ploughed field, 
without a hedge, and almost without a tree — except where stand 
great patches of wood for fuel, — with scarcely a stream of water, 
much less such a thing as a river. What few hills there are, are 
low, and of a fine adhesive sand, and these are generally planted 
with vines. Vineyards, indeed, there are a good many; but on the 
level flat these are no more picturesque than so many plots of 
potatoes, and are by no means so neatly trained as those in the 
Rhine country. 

One most picturesque sight, however, was a group of gipsy 
children on the way. These had issued out of some of the distant 
woods to beg from the passengers on the highway. Bohemia is 
so old a haunt of this singular race, that in France they even still 
bear the name of Bohemians; and truly these were of the wildest. 
There were three or four of them from ten to twelve years of age. 

c c 2 



388 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

They had nothing on them but a coarse shirt of hemp nearly black, 
and yet their skins were still more tawny. They were really hand- 
some in their wildness. Their features were clearly cut, and full 
of expression ; their eyes were like dark fires; their jet black hair 
hung in rich masses down their backs; and their limbs had a 
shapely elasticity about them which nothing but their life of utter 
nature could give them. They were, in fact, in appearance just 
such as Murillo often paints. In elasticity they were exactly as if 
made of India rubber. They were lithe and supple as snakes, and 
seemed as light as if their bodies were not framed of the same 
heavy material as our own. They threw themselves on their 
knees on the road as the eilwagens slowly ascended a hill; wdth 
gestures full of life, and rapid tongues. They sprang up, ran, 
cast themselves down again ; threw at us such speaking looks, and 
were in such constant change of figure and clamour of importunity, 
that in their dusky wildness they looked rather like thing in as 
dream than actual living creatures. 

For two hundred English miles did we advance from Vienna 
to Prague, over these great, naked, and uninteresting plains. Our 
train of eilwagens, five in number, steered over this monotonous 
region like a long caravan in a desert. Nothing could present a 
more unattractive scene than that of the naked and unadorned 
villages which lay here and there scattered over this vast and bare 
region. The two most considerable towns through which we passed, 
Znaim and Iglau, stand high on their sandy hills, as naked as the 
villages, yet had something picturesque in them from this very 
nakedness. Their high old-fashioned towers, spires, heavy gateways, 
steep gables, great churches, and strong enclosing walls, were like 
pictures which we have seen in old Bibles, of towns in Canaan. 
Yet even these towns have many historical associations connected 
with them, and some of them of recent date. In Znaim, Buona- 
parte on the 12th of July 1809, agreed to an armistice with the 
Austrians, after their fatal defeat at Wagram, which led to the 
peace of Vienna in the following October. At Czaslau, Frederick 
the Great beat the Austrian in 1742, and they under Marshal 
Daun beat him at Collin in 1757 with great slaughter, and loss of 
his fine guard and all his baggage. At a place with the singular 
name of Deutsch-Brod, literally, German Bread, the Hussites, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 389 

under Ziska, beat the Emperor Sigismund in 1422, as the Hussites 
themselves had been beaten in 1334, at a place called Bbhmisch- 
Brod, or Bohemian Bread, and had their two celebrated leaders, 
the Procopii, slain. At Czaslau too, was the tomb of the victo- 
rious Hussite, General Ziska, till his remains were disinterred and 
burnt by that horrible fanatic, Ferdinand II. of Austria. 

They are, in fact, historical recollections which fill your mind 
with strange feelings as you traverse this melancholy country. The 
people are serfs ; the property is in large estates belonging to the 
nobles, w r ho live chiefly in Prague and Vienna, and the deepest 
night of Catholic superstition broods over the whole toiling people. 
The second day of our journey was the birthday of the Virgin 
Mary; and the whole population was abroad, and in holiday costume. 
Every village seemed to have all its inhabitants out of doors. They 
were dressed, and preparing to set off in procession to some neigh- 
bouring church. On all hands, right and left, on these great plains 
you saw these processions. The sound of singing came on every 
breeze; and throngs of people besides were streaming along the 
whole^way, as if the inhabitant of each village thought the shrine 
of the next more holy than that of his own. Every now and then 
you met or overtook a great procession, in full song, and holiday 
array; and truly the variety of colour in the dress of the peasant 
girls make a most lively show. They had gowns and bodices of 
brightest and most strongly contrasting hues, and over their heads, 
handkerchiefs of equally showy dyes — yellow, red, or blue. They 
looked, as they marched in the bright sunshine, and the breeze 
fluttered their drapery, like great beds of tulips and peonies. Their 
solemn earnestness was as striking as their gaudiness. First, went 
a man with his book singing out the hymn, which the whole train 
joined in; then two boys in white, bearing church banners; then 
came young girls carrying on a sort of frame a figure of the Virgin, 
very finely dressed, and adorned with ribbons and flowers. Then 
the train, and other banners in the centre and the rear. In some 
also was carried a figure of Christ. 

Nothing could be more gay than the whole country with these 
processions, with the ringing of bells and singing, and with the 
villages as you passed through all alive with throngs of many- 
coloured people; and yet who could avoid reflecting on what 



390 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Bohemia once was, and through what it has passed to bring it to 
what it is. Under the victorious generalship of Ziska and the 
Procopii, the Bohemians fought for their religion and conquered. 
Taborites, Horebites, Utraquists, Orphans, all had fought with a 
fierce and terrible enthusiasm, and had wrested from the hands of 
Sigismund the concession of their religious freedom ; but the Jesuits, 
and their tool the dreadful Ferdinand II. in the Thirty Years' War, 
had taken a terrible revenge, and rooted out their faith and their 
descendants together, with a savage ferocity unparalleled by any 
other scene in history. In this great struggle, where Pope and 
Emperor, Spain and Austria, combined for the destruction of 
Protestantism in Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, the peasantry 
had no Ziska to lead them to conquest. Nobly and well did they 
stand to the death, in many a murderous fight; but the great 
champion of the Protestant faith, Gustavus Adolphus, fell at Liitzen, 
and their peasant chiefs, their Fadingen, their Wiellengen, their 
Wolf Wurm, or even their mysterious leader, the Unknown Student, 
were not a match for the whole power of Austria, and the genius 
of Pappenheim, Wallenstein, Tilly, and Picolomini. Even Ger- 
many, with the gallant Bernhard of Weimar, one of the most 
perfect models of a true-hearted and Christian hero who ever lived, 
and the martial ability of John von Werth, Mercy, Torstenson, 
Banner and Wrangel, in her aid, shrunk before the hosts of 
Austria and Spain, and the petty jealousies of princes calling them- 
selves Protestants, and made an ignominious peace. But Bohemia ! 
never was there such a butchery, — a deep, deadly, and persevering 
butchery of a people ! From end to end of the country marched 
great armies, overwhelming every attempt at resistance by the 
outraged people ; and in their train, from village to village, and 
from house to house, went the Jesuits with troops of dragoons, to 
convert the survivors to the holy mother church. The command 
was to forsake heresy and be converted; the arguments were bullets, 
and the refusal death. Hence comes the phrase of dragooning 
people into anything. 

There is something inexpressibly fearful in the history of these 
days in Bohemia. The whole land was one amphitheatre of mar- 
tyrdom. The horrible bigot Emperor, with true Spanish blood in 
his veins, knelt, telling his beads before his saints, and issuing 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 391 

orders to extirpate Protestantism, till nearly every trace of it and 
of human life had vanished together. The people fought, and 
often conquered, but in vain; and then issued forth that strange 
apparition — the Unknown Student. What a singular episode is 
his advent in the history of this war! His real name and origin 
were unknown, and will always remain so. He had all the reck- 
less enthusiasm of the student; the zeal of the hero or the saint; 
and the eloquence which tingles in the ears of wronged men, and 
runs through the quick nerves like fire. Solemn and mysterious, 
he stood forth in the hour of need, like a spirit from heaven. The 
wondering people gathered round him, listened, and followed 
with shouts to victory. They stood in the field of Gmunden, in the 
face of the magnificent Salzburg Alps. The Unknown Student was 
in the midst of them; and, pointing to the lake, the forests, the 
hills, and the glittering alpine summits above and around them, 
he asked if they would not fight for so glorious a land, and for the 
simple and true hearts in those rocky fastnesses ? In the camp of 
Pappenheim they heard the fiery words of his harangue; they 
heard the vows which burst forth like the voice of the sea in 
reply, and the hymn of faith which followed. From rock, ravine, 
and forest, rushed forth the impetuous peasant thousands; and 
even the veterans of Pappenheim could not sustain the shock. 
The right wing scattered and fled; the peasant army, with the 
Unknown Student at their head, pursuing and hewing them down. 
There was a wild flight to the very gates of Gmunden. Then 
came back the fiery Unknown with his flushed thousands. He 
threw himself on the left wing of Pappenheim with the fury of a 
lion. There was a desperate struggle; the troops of Pappenheim 
wavered, victory hung on the uplifted sword of the Unknown 
Student, when a ball struck him, and his role was played out. His 
head, hoisted on a spear, was a sign of shivering dismay to his 
followers. They fled, leaving on the field four thousand of their 
fellows dead; Pappenheim and extermination in their rear. 

What a picture is that which the historians draw of the horrors 
which this so-called religious war inflicted on all Germany. Some 
of them reckon that the half, and others that two-thirds, of the 
whole population perished in it. In Saxony alone, within two 
years, 900,000 men were destroyed. In Bohemia, at the time of 



39£ CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Ferdinand's death, before the last exterminating campaign of Tor- 
stenson and Banner, the Swedish generals, the population was 
sunk to a fourth. Augsburg, which before had 80,000 inhabitants, 
had then only 18,000; and all Germany in proportion. In Berlin 
were only 300 burghers left. The prosperity of the country was 
for a long period destroyed. Not only did hands fail, and the 
workshops lie in ashes, but the spirit and diligence of trade were 
transferred to other lands. 

After thirty years of battles, burnings, murders, and diseases, 
Germany no longer looked like itself. The proud nation was 
changed into a miserable mob of beggars and thieves. Famishing 
peasants, cowardly citizens, lewd soldiers, rancorous priests, and 
effeminate nobles, were the miserable remains of the great race 
which had perished. Could it be otherwise? The princes them- 
selves gave the example of dastardly falsehood. Priests of all sorts 
raged with a pitiless hate; the Generals sought to enrich them- 
selves; the soldiers, who in the end ruled, were unmanned, and set 
loose from all moral restraints. All the devils of political treachery, 
of religious fanaticism, of the rapacity of aspiring adventurers, 
and of the brutality of the soldiery, were let loose on the people. 
Driven from hearth and home, in eternal terror of the soldiers and 
without instruction, what could be expected from the growing 
generation but sordid cowardice, and the shameless immorality 
which they had learned from the army? Even the last remains of 
political freedom perished in the war; since all classes were plun- 
dered, and their strength exhausted. The nobles could only 
maintain themselves in the service of the princes; the free cities 
dragged on a feeble existence; the peasant was thoroughly demo- 
ralized by the soldiers, and was out and out a slave. The repre- 
sentatives of the States lost their meaning, for they could find with 
the Emperor but a feeble protection against the lesser princes, and 
none against the greater. Faith had, in the conflict, dissolved 
itself into superstition and unbelief. The citizen, perpetually 
harassed with pressing anxieties, saw devils and ghosts; and the 
soldier, through the manner in which he fought, had become 
indifferent to that for which he fought; and was neither Catholic 
nor Lutheran. The early civilization of Germany had retrograded 
into barbarism. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 393 

The atrocities which had been committed in this war were 
unexampled. In the storming of Magdeburg, the soldiers had 
amused themselves, as a relaxation from their wholesale horrors 
perpetrated on the adults, with practising tortures on children. 
One man boasted that he had tossed twenty babies on his spear. 
Others they roasted alive in ovens; and others they pinned down 
in various modes of agony, and pleased themselves with then cries 
as they sate and eat. Writers of the time describe thousands 
dying of exhaustion; numbers as creeping naked into corners and 
cellars, in the madness of famine falling upon, tearing each other 
to pieces, and devouring each other; children being devoured by 
parents, and parents by children; many tearing up bodies from 
the graves, or seeking the pits where horse-killers threw their 
carcasses, for the carrion, and even breaking the bones for the 
marrow, after they were full of worms ! Thousands of villages lay 
in ashes; and, after the war, a person might in many parts of 
Germany go fifty miles in almost any direction without meeting 
a single man, a head of cattle, or a sparrow; while in another, in 
some ruined hamlet, you might see a single old man and a child, 
or a couple of old women. "Ah, God!" says an old chronicler, 
" in what a miserable condition stand our cities ! Where before 
were thousands of streets, there now were not hundreds. The 
burghers by thousands had been chased into the water, hunted to 
death in the woods, cut open and their hearts torn out, their ears, 
noses and tongues cut off, the soles of their feet opened, straps cut 
out of their backs; women, children, and men, so shamefully and 
barbarously used, that it is not to be conceived. How miserable 
stand the little towns, the open hamlets ! There lie they, burnt, 
destroyed, so that neither roof, beam, door, or window, are to be 
seen. The churches? they have been burnt, the bells carried away, 
and the most holy places made stables, market-houses, and worse 
of, the very altars being purposely defiled and heaped with filth of 
all kinds." Whole villages were filled with dead bodies of men, 
women, and children, destroyed by plague and hunger, with quan- 
tities of cattle which had been preyed on by dogs, wolves, and 
vultures, because there had been no one to mourn or to bury them. 
Whole districts, which had been highly cultivated, were again 
grown over with wood; families who had fled, on returning after 



394 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the war, found trees growing on their hearths; and even now, it 
is said, foundations of villages are in some places found in the 
forests, and the traces of ploughed lands. It is the fixed opinion 
that to this day Germany, in point of political freedom and the 
progress of public art and wealth, feels the disastrous consequences 
of this war. 

A more solemn lesson on the horrible effects of the violation of 
conscience, and of Jesuitical bigotry, is not to be found in history. 
To this dismal Ferdinand II. it has been justly said that Napoleon 
was, in comparison of destructive power, but a pigmy. Napoleon 
traversed three quarters of the globe with fire and sword, yet came 
far short in human destruction of this Ferdinand, who, while he 
sat still and told his beads, accomplished the extermination of ten 
millions of men. 

Such are the thoughts which crowd on you as you pass through 
Bohemia. None of the dispensations of Providence are more 
mysterious than those exhibited in it. In no nation were the 
people formerly more universally and firmly rooted in Protestan- 
tism: in none was it so resolutely defended; in none has it been so 
completely and permanently extirpated. From that day to this, the 
whole country of John Huss and Jerome of Prague lies prostrate 
in the most profound Catholic ignorance and bigotry; so much so, 
that when Joseph II. offered them freedom of political and religious 
opinion, they spurned it from them, and joined with the aristocracy 
in heaping on the too liberal Emperor those anxieties and mortifi- 
cations which sunk him to an early grave. When he received the 
news that the people, and especially the peasantry of Hungary and 
Bohemia, were so stupid as to be incensed against him because he 
offered to make them freer and happier, he exclaimed, " I must 
die ! I must be made of wood, if I did not die ! " and his words 
were soon verified. Bohemia is a land of hereditary bondsmen, 
and it looks like one. 

9. PRAGUE. 

It is with similar feelings and ideas that you enter Prague. 
It is not for its galleries and works of art that you visit this city. 
It is to behold the scenes where so many singular and important 
events and revolutions have taken place : amongst the greatest, the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 395 

rise and fall of Protestantism, of which we have spoken. We 
would see that famous old university, one of the earliest in Europe, 
where Huss taught the doctrines of the Reformation to its forty 
thousand students, before a single university yet existed in Ger- 
many, and whence on the breaking out of the religious troubles 
twenty thousand German students marched forth, and founded the 
University of Leipsic. We would see the old Rath-Haus, under 
whose windows the Hussite priest passing with the sacramental 
cup in his hand, the bigoted counsellors threw stones down on 
him, and were soon after, by the indignant people, thrown out 
after them themselves. We would see where Wallenstein lived, 
and where Ziska fought; and truly no city can by its situation 
afford you a finer general view, or give a more venerable and 
stately impression by its details. It lies in a great amphitheatre. 
Around, for the most part, at the distance of several miles, rise 
bleak, naked hills, which however, under the different lights and 
shades of the day and the season, assume a variety of aspects, ever 
with a degree of silent wildness in them. Through the plain on 
which it stands, and through the city itself, rolls the Moldau, a 
noble river, as wide as the Thames at London bridge. The city, 
as seen from the side by which you approach it from Vienna, lies 
stretched on this mountain-girded plain; a magnificent sight! with 
all its towers, spires, domes, and old palaces, ranging above its mass 
of other buildings, a place of 120,000 inhabitants. Masses of fine 
trees and gardens are interspersed; the Moldau rolls rapidly on 
between its deep and woody banks below it; near you rises the 
celebrated hill of Ziska, where he pitched his victorious camp ; and 
on the opposite side of the city stands grandly aloft the Hradschin, 
a hill crowned with the great church of St. Vitus, and the old 
royal palace, and clustered over with other palaces of the nobility, 
with churches and convents. At the foot of the Hradschin stands 
the immense palace of Wallenstein, and between that side called the 
Kleine-Seite, or Little Side, and the old city stretches the celebrated 
Bridge of Prague, renowned for many a battle and bloody struggle. 
As you wander through the city the old Rath-Haus, already 
mentioned, arrests your attention, with its huge horn fastened to 
the battlements of its tower, probably to be blown on alarm of fire 
or foes. The old Jews' Burial-ground, a perfect wilderness of 



396 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

heavy Hebrew monuments overgrown with tangled elder trees, so 
old themselves that they lean for support on the tombs. These 
and the dark old synagogue bearing evidence to the antiquity of the 
Jews here, who claim to be the original founders of the city soon 
after their national dispersion. You reach the great bridge crowned 
with whole rows of statues of saints, larger than life, and in the 
centre arch that pre-eminently of St. John Nepomuck, who was 
thrown into the river by the Emperor Wencezlaus, and his corpse 
setting the Moldau on fire, he was drawn out, buried in St. Vitus' s 
church on the Hradschin, and, in due time, canonized, and now 
is become the great protector of all German bridges. 

But it is the Hradschin which is the fullest of interest. This 
hill is literally clustered all over with palaces, and churches, and 
buildings, every one of which has a history which might set up a 
writer of romance. Here is the old Bohemian palace, with its large 
antique rooms, so quaint and spacious, looking for all the world such 
a place as you would imagine the monarch of Bohemia living in. 
Here are portraits of many of them, and amongst them the majes- 
tically beautiful Maria Theresia, and her beautiful daughters, the 
most beautiful of them the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. Here, 
again, you have from the windows another splendid view of the 
city, this " old discrowned queen " of Bohemia ; and can see it as 
that weak but ambitious prince, Frederick of the Palatinate saw it, 
as he sate here for one winter, whence he was called the Winter 
King, dreaming himself monarch of Bohemia, without taking one 
step to secure himself in that post to which the Bohemian people 
had invited him. He had left his hereditary state, the Palatinate, 
to the mercy of his enemies, which was speedily devastated by 
Spinola and his Spaniards and Netherlander, and here, without 
taking a single measure for his security, but on the contrary, 
alienating the nobles by his folly and German favouritism, he sate 
and feasted with his equally weak and ambitious wife, Elizabeth, 
the daughter of James I. of England, till the forces of the League 
were suddenly upon him; and he was the first to fly with his wife, 
who in that and many a succeeding hour of misery and destitution 
must have bitterly repented exciting him to assume a crown he was 
so unfit to wear. 

Here you see the council chamber, out of whose windows the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 397 

indignant representatives, with the Graf von Thurn at their head, 
threw the senators whom they knew to be in the interest of 
Austria and the Jesuits, Slawata, Martiniz, and their secretary 
Fabricius Platter, with which act commenced the miserable Thirty 
Years' War, the extirpation of Protestantism in Bohemia, and the 
final subjection of Bohemia to Austria. Here is the fine old church 
of St. Vitus, with many curious paintings, mosaics, and monu- 
ments; the most splendid, that massy silver shrine of St. John 
Nepomuck, with four large silver angels hovering over it. The 
external appearance of the church, however, is not less a monument 
of Frederick the Great; for it stands partly in ruins, as he battered 
it with his balls in the Seven Years' War. Here is the great 
untenanted palace of the Graf Czernin; not far distant the Strahow 
Convent, containing the portrait of Ziska; and below the hill, on 
the left hand, the vast pile of Wallenstein, still inhabited by his 
descendants. These, and a host of other buildings, old palaces, 
and towers, bring up so many historical matters, that it would 
require a volume for their details. 

But Prague is not less alive to the enjoyments of the present 
than any city of Germany. It has its haunts of recreation and 
pleasure. It has its theatre and opera. Its walls on the heights 
around are converted into delightful planted promenades, whence 
you can see over the city on all sides. It is the same on the 
Hradschin and the Lorenzi-berg beyond it; and still farther out 
on that side lies the Baum-garten, one of those large park-like 
gardens which they term English, and where a coffee-house, music, 
and gay people are often to be found. But in the Moldau, close 
to the city, lie two or three islands, which are justly the favourite 
places of resort. In the Farber-Insel, the one closest to the shore 
on the city side, there is a fine cassino, with splendid ball and con- 
versation rooms, gardens, a musical orchestra; and several evenings 
in the week you may see the most distinguished people of Prague 
there, and hear some of the finest military music in the world. In 
no part of Germany have I seen a finer race of women, dressed 
with a more elegant taste, than the ladies whom I have seen in 
these gardens. 

A chain-bridge has just been thrown over the Maldau near this 
island, resting as a centre on the next island; and it was curious 



398 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

to hear the assertions of the Prague people regarding it. It would 
never stand. It would drop with the first people who went over it. 
When that did not happen, it would be carried away with the first 
flood. When that happened as little, then the ice-masses of the 
next winter would dash it to atoms. It has stood out the ice- 
masses, too, with the greatest steadiness; and now the good people 
begin to be vastly proud of it, and to declare it, without exception, 
the finest chain-pier in the world ! 

A great camp was pitched on the banks of the Moldau, near 
the city. Austrians, Bohemians, Hungarians, were there all assem- 
bled, and tended more strongly to complete our ideas of Prague as 
it used to be, so often assaulted with armies and beset with camps. 

10. JOURNEY THROUGH THE SAXON SWITZERLAND TO DRESDEN. 

To our countryman Mr. Andrews, one of the introducers of 
steam on the Danube, we are also indebted for one of the most 
charming steam voyages in Germany — that from Prague through 
the heart of the Saxon Switzerland to Dresden, which is performed 
in the course of a good summer's day. The Germans laughed at 
the idea of navigating this part of the Elbe by steam, but now very 
comfortably enjoy it by hundreds every day through the summer, 
in one direction or the other. The enterprise being recent, the 
arrangements at Prague for the conveyance of the passengers thence 
to the nearest point on the Elbe to which the steamer came, a 
distance of about twenty English miles, were none of the best. 
We were told that the company would convey us in omnibuses at 
five o'clock in the morning; but we discovered when too late, that 
these omnibuses were mere caravans with canvass curtains. We 
should have done far wiser, as we would advise others, to have 
taken a carriage over-night to the nearest town on the Elbe which 
the steamer passes. The roads, as they are everywhere in the 
neighbourhood of the large cities in Austria, especially Prague and 
Vienna, were three or four inches deep in dust, which, by the long 
continuance of intensely hot weather, was ground so fine that it 
rose all round the caravans in a dense and constant cloud, and 
penetrating through every opening and crevice, literally buried us. 
Anon we turned out of the great road into a by-way, where 
indeed we lost the dust, but encountered inconveniences not less. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 399 

The road was of the worst description, and soon ceased to be one 
at all. We were bounced over rough ground, over stock and stone, 
to the plentiful alarm and bruises of the passengers, to the river 
side, where lay the steamer in a solitary place, without quay, village, 
or house. Once on board, our grievances were speedily forgotten 
in the urbanity of the proprietor, Mr. Andrews, who was on board, 
and in the charms of the voyage. 

The early part of the scenery was by no means romantic, but it 
was very agreeable. Rich banks, a broad and finely flowing river, 
a country of cheerful hill and dale around; here and there a dis- 
tant town, or castle ; and at every village on the banks, thousands 
of the peasantry collected to see the wonder of the passing steamer. 
It was Sunday, too, and thus all the population in their best 
clothes seemed collected on the banks of the Elbe. Anon, how- 
ever, near Aussig, the scenery began to assume a striking character. 
High rocks hemmed in the river; mountains crowned with forests, 
and bold and lofty precipices, surrounded us; and the views both 
up and down the river became beautiful in no ordinary degree. 
Between the banks and the feet of the rocks hung the most deli- 
cious slopes with vineyards, villages scattered here and there, and 
people out, as if enjoying greatly their own charming scenery. 
Behind these the rocks rose in lofty precipices, bold, splintered, 
with ever changing variety of form, and with openings between 
them into the heart of the mountains of the most dark and yet 
inviting description. Above hung thick woods, often of pine; and 
wherever the eye turned, it was met by scenes of wildness, bold 
beauty, and an Arcadian sweetness and cheerfulness that were 
most delightful. Here you passed a lofty castle; there, the isolated 
rocks called the Jungfernsprung, or Maiden's Leap; and nume- 
rous traditions are related to you of these places by the passengers. 
At Tetschen, the scene is open and fine. High above you on the 
right, on its perpendicular cliff, soars the castle of the Graf Thuu, 
who with his family were seated in a balcony surveying the scenes 
below, and the bustle created by the arrival of the steamer. At 
the foot of the cliffs lay the village, and on the left bank stood 
the large and handsome buildings of the new baths, surrounded 
by rocks and valleys of the most attractive character. Thence to 
Schandau the scenery was still more striking. Below Schandau 



400 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

rose the two giant insulated hills, the Lilienstein and the Konig- 
stein, one on each side of the river; rearing themselves into the 
sky. Thence, the course of the river is one grand defile of preci- 
pitous rocks crowned with fine woods, every moment increasing in 
grandeur, to the Bastei, the most impressive object of the whole 
voyage. This is a stupendous pile of rocks, rising sheer from the 
water's edge 800 feet, and on its summit a platform guarded with 
a handrail, on which are constantly to be seen parties, looking 
small as fairies, gazing down on your rapid passage below. Soon 
after leaving the Bastei the scene becomes tame, you pass the town 
of Pirna on the one hand, and Pilnitz, the king of Saxony's 
palace, on the other, with its pleasant gardens coming down to the 
water's edge; and then comes — Dresden. 

Such is a rapid view of the course of the Elbe, which, to observe 
in all its varied and unbroken beauty it is best to descend at once. 
You have then passed through the Saxon Switzerland, but not 
explored it. This great glen of the Elbe is but one scene of it. 
Right and left in all directions extend its valleys, and rise its rocks 
and mountains, and would require three or four days to take the 
most hasty view of them. To penetrate the recesses of this beau- 
tiful district, you must then again ascend the Elbe, as you may any 
morning by the steamer, and take up your sojourn at the village 
of Schandau, whence you can on foot, or by carriage, mules, or 
sedan chairs, traverse the various scenes with the utmost conve- 
nience. But there is no way in which the wild sweetness of this 
lovely region can be so thoroughly enjoyed as by those who have a 
pleasant knot of nature-loving friends, and leisure to devote a week 
or two to it. It is just the country for such happy people to 
wander through and explore at will. To roam along the clear 
streams with rod and line, pulling the firm trout from beneath the 
shade of the tall rocks; or to take books and your dinner, and, 
encamping in some Arcadian glen, beneath the spreading trees, 
read, and laugh, and dream a whole day away; or explore every nook 
and mount on the eminence that rises naked above the unknown 
woods. The Saxon Switzerland has a different character to any 
other scenery which I have seen in Germany. It is more varied; 
more broken up into precipices, and torn open into dells and glens, 
giving a constant hope of some fresh discovery of beauty or gran- 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



401 



deur. It reminds one of our native Derbyshire, or of some parts 
of Scotland and Wales, so different to the rounded hills and ranges 
of hills in Germany generally; while the views from some of the 







heights are enchanting from their airiness and vast extent, including 
the Erzgebirge in one direction, and the Riesengebirge in another. 
Then the heights of the Lilienstein, the Konigstein, the Bastei, 
the Kuhstall, the Great Winterberg, etc., though they all lie at 
no great distance from each other, cannot be ascended without 
great exertion; and this in the usual heat of the summer here, 
is soon found, if done in a hurry, to be very exhausting. To be 
enjoyed, you should take now one, now another, of these objects. 
To climb the Bastei and explore the dark defile of the Otterwalder- 
Grund is excursion enough for one easy day. To climb the heights 
of the Lilienstein and the Konigstein ; to survey the massy for- 
tress on the summit of the latter — so often the dungeon of the 
best citizens of Saxony, as in the days of the infamous Augustus 
the Strong, and the equally infamous minister Briihl, — never yet 
carried, not even by the great Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 

D D 



l 



402 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

nor by Napoleon himself, whose balls, the peasants will tell you, 
shot from the Lilienstein, were sucked down by the draught occa- 
sioned by the current of the river, and struck only the rock below; 
this will be enough for another pleasant day. One of the most 
charming excursions is to the Kuhstall and Great Winterberg. 
Directly from the back of the village runs out the valley leading 
to these places. You are presently in the depths of a wild glen, 
on each side of which rise precipitous rocks and woody mountains. 
A stream, transparent as crystal, hurries along the bottom through 
the most delicious little meadows ; glens open right and left into 
the most poetical nooks ; and peasants here and there, haymaking 
or tending their cattle or goats; or boys with hand-nets, fishing 
under the banks of the stream for trout or crawfish, form scenes 
and groups such as you have before only seen in Claude or Poussin. 
With ever -varying features of beauty you advance eight or ten miles, 
now buried in some narrow gorge of the rocks, dark with masses 
of trees; now coming out again to sunshine, and views of sloping 
meadows skirted by the hanging trees of the forest; here and 
there the silver fir shooting up in the face of the tall precipices, half 
shrouding them and half revealing their grey rocks with fine effect. 
A winding and easy ascent, of perhaps an hour, brings you out 
at the Kuhstall ; a magnificent arch in the native rock, cut right 
through, and giving you a view, below and beyond, of startling 
solemnity and magnificence. This place is so named because the 
Protestants of Saxony and Bohemia fled hither; as indeed into 
all this mountainous and wild track, in the Thirty Years' War, from 
the ravages of both Austrians and Swedes, under their later gene- 
rals, Torstenson and Banner, who — disgusted with the sordid and 
pusillanimous character of the Elector of Saxony, so different to that 
of his great ancestor, the friend of Luther and the Reformation — 
laid waste his territories, and avenged his faults on the innocent 
people. Here they are said to have driven their cows for security; 
and, when the woods were dense, and without track, they could not 
have been easily approached. The effect of these recollections was 
unluckily here dreadfully destroyed by this impressive spot being 
turned into a vulgar show-place. A little rustic hut is erected, 
where people live, to shew the place; and where, I suppose, some 
refreshment may be obtained. Under the noble arch lay a fiddle, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 403 

a harp, and a lot of articles in a glass case, for sale; such as you 
see at ordinary bazaars. The moment we appeared, out from the 
hut rushed a girl and a great boy, and began to harp and fiddle 
away at a great rate. It was in vain to tell them we wanted no 
music; music, such as it was, they resolved we should have. An- 
other boy fixed himself on us, to shew all that we already saw with 
our own eyes; and it was not without some difiiculty that we could 
get the fiddle out of our ears, or the boy from our elbow, and be 
left to make our observations at peace. 

Various parts of this pile of rocks, which stands nobly aloft in 
the circle of these great woods, are named after the uses to which 
the refugees are said to have put them. The views from them are 
solemn and vast. Solemn, down into the depth at your feet, into 
the great amphitheatre, surrounded by grey cliffs and filled with 
woods on one side, with the crags of the great Winterberg beyond • 
and vast and airy in another, over a wide country, in which the 
Konigstein and the Lilienstein — the head of the latter like a great 
crown — stood high aloft above all else, and seemed to glorify them- 
selves in the breezes and sunshine of heaven. 

If you would extend your walk through the woods to the great 
Winterberg, or, still farther, to the Prebischt-thor, a still more 
magnificent natural arch, you will have made one of the most 
impressive and romantic rambles anywhere to be found. You can 
take a guide, if necessary, from the foot of the hill, before ascending 
to the Kuhstall, where plenty of them wait with mules also, or the 
man from the Kuhstall will go on with you; and you can, instead 
of returning, drop down the glens to Herrnskretschen on the Elbe, 
and descend it in a boat to your old station — Schandau. 

Such is the way in which to enjoy thoroughly this lovely dis- 
trict; where, if you speak the language of the country, the peasantry 
will point out to you every day fresh hidden valleys and wild 
scenes, and tell you plenty of stories of the times of persecution, 
and of the spirits which live in the heart of the mountains. 

11. DRESDEN. 

Dresden, like every city of Germany, has its own peculiar 
character. Its distinction is that of a quiet and settled gentility. 
Mrs. Jameson has called Dresden the fine-lady of Germany. If she 

d d2 



404 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

had left out the word fine, she would have hit off most exactly the 
nature of the place. There is a feeling of solid, undisputed respect- 
ability about it; a quiet and refined manner, and the intelligence 
of a well-educated and tasteful people, give Dresden a good title 
to the character of a lady, among German cities; but neither in 
general appearance, nor in its habits, has it anything of the air 
of the fine lady. On the contrary, it strikes you on entering it 
as something old, and more dingy than any other city of Germany 
whatever. You are not struck and startled with its splendid public 
buildings and monuments, especially of new ones. All is modest 
and substantial. The houses are, externally, far less painted and 
adorned than German houses generally are; and there is a dinge 
upon them which reminds you wonderfully of our English towns, 
and particularly of London. There is a compactness of streets 
too, old market-places, instead of new fine squares with avenues of 
trees, so commonly interspersing German towns. The general use 
of coals here, instead of wood, has diffused over all a very sufficient 
blackness; and you can find smuts falling on you as in London; 
but the excellent society here, where the court resides, where artists 
are drawn in numbers by the noble gallery, and literary people, 
Tieck amongst them, as well as respectable English families, abound, 
soon make its external appearance forgotten. 

Had Dresden, indeed, only its Gallery, that were enough to 
make it a most desirable place of residence. The longer you fre- 
quent this, the more you become sensible of its just fame. It stands 
in the centre of the city, a short walk from almost any part, is 
daily thrown open, or admissible by ticket, and affords one of the 
most delightful luxuries which a city can possess. Here your feet 
will involuntary lead you, day after day, to stand before the Madonna 
del Sisto of Raffaelle, whose heavenly sweetness grows upon you 
and fascinates you more and more at every successive contempla- 
tion. The La Notte of Correggio; the little recumbent Magdalen, 
of the same artist, that universal favourite; Holbein's masterpiece, 
so wonderfully superior to his productions in general, in nature and 
freedom ; the Virgin worshiped by the Burgermeister of Basle, Jacob 
Meyer and his family : these are enough to stamp the pre-eminence 
of a gallery; but, besides these, what a splendid host of Raffaelles, 
Titians, DaVincis, Carlo Dolcis, Caravaggios, Rubens, Rembrandts, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 405 

and of almost all the great schools and great painters, present them- 
selves as you advance from room to room. When you have made 
your gaze familiar with the largest and most striking of them, what 
whole troops of glorious little Wouvermanns, Paul Potters, Gerard 
Dows, Van der Weldes, and Van der Werfs, Ruysdaels, Teniers, 
Ostades, etc., grow up into your notice, and astonish you by their 
excellence! For months you may still wander here, and make the 
most agreeable discoveries; nay, I have heard artists, who have 
daily resorted hither, say, that after years they have become ac- 
quainted with some which they had never before noticed, but which 
they could not enough admire. 

Here you always find numbers of artists from various countries 
busily employed in copying. Here were at this time Mr. Lane, 
boldly copying the Madonna of Raffaelle; one of the Misses Sharp, 
the other having married Mr. Seyfarth, of this city; Mr. Lee, an 
excellent American artist; and Madame Lucasie, a German, making 
an admirable copy of the Magdalene of Correggio. This lady, 
indeed, is styled by some of her fellow artists the possessor or 
usurper of this picture, as she is almost always engaged on copies 
of it for England, her price for one of which is one hundred guineas. 
Her copies are, in truth, most excellent. This picture was some 
time ago carried off by thieves, for the sake of the richly jewelled 
frame in which it was, but on a reward being offered for its 
recovery, a letter was received from the robbers, saying that it 
would be found in a cave somewhere near Salzburg, where it was 
discovered, but without the frame. 

There is also a collection of Canalettis at the gallery on the 
Bruhl Terrace, chiefly of views of Dresden, so wonderfully accurate, 
so natural in colour and tone, that after having seen them several 
times, you observe, especially towards evening, in your walks, the 
same views so exactly before you, that you are often ready to forget 
whether you are looking at Dresden itself or at Canaletti. The 
great dome of the Frauenkirche rises often before you, so perfectly 
like, in colour, tone, and in every respect, that the reality seems a 
Canaletti, and Canaletti the reality. There never were paintings, 
in which the perfect truth, without exaggeration on the one hand, 
and we may almost say without inferiority on the other, was 
exhibited, as in those of Canaletti. He knew that nature was 



408 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

unsurpassable, and was therefore contented to make a genuine copy 
of her, but then he was not contented to fall far short of her; and 
his triumph is complete, because he has given his scenes, not only 
with their simple correctness, but with all their poetry. The 
warmth, the cold, the gloom, the aerial hues, the delicate chiaro- 
oscuro, the transparency of waters, all are such as under the same 
circumstances the scenes themselves present. These effects are 
quite astounding, for they are not the fruits of a servile imitation, 
but of a conception and a transfer of the whole life and spirit of the 
things themselves. 

From these glorious Galleries shall we wander through the 
various collections of arms and armour, jewels, and other things, 
which occupy the everpouring streams of visitors? No; the royal 
jewels and works of art, especially the ivory-carved cups and golden 
eggs of Nuremberg (watches) in the green vaults under the palace; 
the china in the Japanese palace, of all ages and countries; the 
splendid suits of armour in the Zwinger, are scenes of their kind 
nowhere else to be matched in magnificence, and which make one 
wonder how they can have escaped the greedy grasp of the con- 
querors, so often as Dresden has been overrun and occupied by 
hostile armies; — but we shall leave them for a visit to Retsch, and 
to the beautiful new theatre, on the first night that Schroeder 
Devrient returns from an absence of some months. 

Yes; it was no ordinary pleasure to see that superb actress and 
amiable woman step into the presence of her affectionate admirers, 
and to hear the thunders of congratulation which made the very 
roof of that lovely house vibrate above her honoured head. And 
worthy is she of such enthusiastic admiration. Her modest amia- 
bility in private life and the generous soul, which are the life of 
her acting and singing in the theatre, are equally admirable. Her 
voice is probably not equal to what it has been, for she must now, 
at least, be forty years of age; but the life, the spirit, the nobility 
of emotion, the genuine passion with which she throws herself into 
the part, and the sentiment with which she animates her singing, 
leave nothing like them in Germany, and probably in their com- 
bination nowhere else. In art and its triumphs, in the attractions 
of youth and the melody of youthful organs, in the mere prodigies 
of scientific perfection, Madame Schroeder Devrient may have her 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 407 

superior; but in all that belongs to the heart and mind, in the 
expression of all that ennobles human nature, I have never yet seen 
her equal. The character in which she appeared on this occasion 
was Fidelio, and the living passion which she displayed through the 
whole was a triumph of human nature, and made the enthusiasm 
with which she is regarded at Dresden anything but a wonder. 

Our visit to Retsch — the poet-illustrator of Shakspeare, Schiller 
and Goethe, in his well-known Outlines — was a genuine Arcadian 
episode, a dip into the fine simplicity of a poetical existence passed 
in the bosom of nature, a refined rusticity, a fragment of the Golden 
Age. This noble artist has a house in the Neustadt at Dresden, 
where in the winter he receives his friends, and where a most 
interesting class of persons is to be met; but in summer he retires 
to his Weinberg, that is, his Vineyard at Tosnitz, six or seven miles 
down the valley. They who would know exactly where his abode 
there is, may readily see it by standing on the fine airy bridge at 
Dresden, and looking down the valley to the next range of hills. 
On their ridge at Tosnitz stands a tower; directly below it, at the 
feet of the hills, is a white house; and there nestles Retsch in his 
poetical retirement, maturing those beautiful conceptions which 
have given him so wide a fame. 

A pleasant drive down the valley brought us into this region of 
vineyards, which in the bright colours of autumn did not want for 
picturesque effect. In the midst of these we found the very simple 
cottage of the artist. His wife and niece compose all his family, 
and he can muse on his Fancies at will. His house was furnished, 
as German houses often are, somewhat barely, and with no trace of 
picture or print on the walls, but a piano and heaps of music told 
of the art, of which his wife is passionately fond. While noticing 
these things, a very broad and stout-built man, of middle stature, 
and with a great quantity of grey hair, stood before vis. By 
portraits which we had seen of him, and which are like and yet 
unlike, we immediately recognised him. Though polite, yet there 
was a coldness about his manner, which seemed plainly to say who 
are these who come to interrupt me out of mere curiosity, for they 
are quite strange to me. When, however, he understood that 
Mrs. Howitt was the English poetess in whom he had expressed so 
much interest, a mist seemed to pass from his eyes; he stretched 



408 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

out his arms, grasped her hand in both his, and shook it with 
a heartiness that must have been felt for some minutes after. He 
then gave one of his hands to our daughter, another to myself, 
with equally vigorous demonstrations of pleasure, and set about to 
display to us everything that he thought could gratify us. Through 
various narrow passages, and up various stairs of his rustic abode, 
he conducted us to his own little study, where he shewed to us from 
the window his vineyard running up the hill, pulled from a shelf 
a copy of Mrs. Howitt's " Seven Temptations," and sat down to a 
little table, where he told us he had sketched most of the outlines 
of Faust and Shakspeare. He exhibited to us drawings and paint- 
ings in profusion, till his niece appeared with a tray bearing splendid 
wine and grapes from his own vineyard; a perfect little picture in 
itself, for in the pretty and amiable-looking niece we could see the 
prototype of a good many of his young damsels in his sketches. 
He then drew forth from under a heap of drawings the Album of 
his wife, a book which, from Mrs. Jameson's interesting description, 
we had a great desire to see. This is unquestionably the most 
valuable and beautiful album in the world. It is filled with the 
most perfect creations of his fancy, whether sportive or solemn, 
as they have accumulated through years, and it is a thousand pities 
that they are not published during his lifetime, while he could 
superintend their execution, and see that justice was done to them. 
It is a volume of the poetry of sublimity, beauty, and piety; for 
while he is the finest illustrator of the ideas of great poets, he is 
also a great poet himself, writing out his imaginations with his 
pencil. The Zephyrs besetting his wife on a walk, fluttering her 
dress, and carrying off her hat, is a charming piece of sportiveness. 
The Angel of Goodness blessing her, is most beautiful with the 
heavenly beauty of love. Christ as a youth, standing with an axe 
in his hand before the shop of Joseph, with children about him, 
to whom he is pointing out the beauties of nature, and thence 
unfolding to them the Creator, is full of the holiest piety and 
youthful grace. The Angel of Death, " severe in youthful beauty," 
and the sublime figure of Imagination advancing on its way, and 
looking forward into the mysteries of futurity, are glorious creations. 
In short, this gem of a book, with its truly wondrous drawings 
—not mere outlines, but most delicately and exquisitely finished — • 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 409 

will one day raise still higher the true fame of this great and 
original artist. 

We had gone so far with the Herr Professor, as he is there 
called, into the fairyland, or rather heaven of poetry, that we were 
startled to find the day going fast over. As we had turned over 
these charmed leaves, the artist sate by and read to us his written 
description of the various sketches, ever and anon breaking away 
into half moralizing, half sentimental and poetical observations, 
quite in the spirit of his fancies. We were extremely sorry that 
the arrangements for our further journey did not allow us once 
more to return to this simple and happy retreat of the Muses of 
Poetry and Painting. With true country cordiality, himself, his 
wife, and lovely niece, accompanied us to our carriage, and as we 
whirled away through the ocean of vines, the good-hearted man 
stood and waved his cap to us, till the last turn shut out from view 
him and his house. 

After this visit we shall say little of the many others which we 
made in the neighbourhood of Dresden. Of our drive to the 
village of Kachnitz, the scene of the last battle with Napoleon, and 
where, under a few trees, stands the appropriate monument of 
Mureau, a square granite pillar surmounted with a helmet, on the 
spot where both his legs were shot away, as he stood by the side 
of the Emperor Alexander. To the various gardens, where music 
and popular enjoyment are as rife as anywhere in Germany. To 
the pleasant cemetery in Neustadt, where in the wall is a most 
quaint and curious Dance of Death in relievo, and where you find 
the tombs of Tiedge the poet, Adelung the lexicographer, and 
other eminent men. Of such places Dresden has plenty, though 
its immediate neighbourhood is rather agreeable than fine. It is at 
the distance of three or four miles that you begin to enter more 
romantic scenery, while within a three hours' voyage lies the lovely 
Saxon Switzerland. 

The excellence of our inn here, the Hotel de France, deserves 
a mark of approval, which it probably would not receive had it 
not, like all German inns, had a peculiar nuisance, which may as 
well have a word here. These inns are almost all built round a 
court-yard. Into this, if large enough, carriages are perpetually 
thundering, and grooms bawling, so that a liberal distribution of 



410 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

noise is dispensed to all the sleeping rooms around. These grooms 
and carriages are in active operation by three o'clock in a morn- 
ing. If the court is not large enough for carriages and stables, 
it is the abode of fowls for the table, and two or three cocks gene- 
rally begin lustily crowing against each other about the time that 
the grooms begin to exert their lungs in the larger ones. This was 
the case here. German landlords seem to have adopted the most 
effectual means to prevent their guests hurting themselves with 
over sleep. At five o'clock in the morning, the Haus-knecht, or 
boots, begins heartily to flog and brush the coats and other 
garments committed to him; and instead of taking them to a 
distant part of the premises, of all places in the world he chooses 
the landing-place of each floor for his sonorous operations, and 
thus dust and the sound of banging are driven through all the 
keyholes of all the rooms round with the fullest effect. If carpen- 
ters, bricklayers, or other resounding characters, are wanted in the 
house, they are sure to be introduced very early in the morning, 
at three or four o'clock, so that they may inconvenience nobody 
in the day; and knocking, sawing, and scraping, go on as briskly 
as if travellers were particularly grateful for such incentives to 
early rising. 

12. VISIT TO HERRNHUT. 

Amongst those places in the world which I have always had 
a desire to see, is Herrnhut: the original settlement in Saxony of 
those pious people whom we in England call Moravians, and whose 
wonderful devotion to missionary labours in all quarters of the 
world, and wonderful success in proportion to the smallness of 
their body, must have excited the admiration of all who have in 
the least regarded such matters. As a boy I read the account of 
these persecuted wanderers arriving at this their destined place of 
rest; of their reception by Count Zinzendorf; of their clearing the 
forest, and reclaiming the land around. It was to me a Robinson 
Crusoe experiment on a larger and more sociable scale; and every 
incident and spot, the cutting down of the first tree, the raising 
the first hut, the warm welcome given them by the pious Count; 
their laying out their fields, their schools, their burial-ground, the 
building of their church, and the organization of their religious and 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 411 

social system, till, in a very few years, they sent forth their colonics 
into distant lands, and from Labrador to the Cape of Good Hope 
dispersed devoted labourers to christianize mankind, — the whole 
was to me more beautiful than any imaginary romance; and I 
always cherished a hope, some day, to set foot in this quiet and yet 
how eventful a place. 

Here then was the opportunity. Herrnhut lies in Upper 
Lusatia, a few miles to the right of the great road from Dresden 
to Breslau, turning off at Lobau, betwixt that place and Zittau, 
some fifty English miles from Dresden. Our way was over a 
pleasant country, with great woods of dark fir, very much like 
those in which the elfin stories of Tieck are so often laid; and 
great plains, the scenes of different bloody battles, particularly 
near the high and picturesque town of Bautzen, where Napoleon 
stood a severe contest in 1813, and near which, at Hochkirch, 
Marshal Keith, the friend of Rousseau, was killed in the Seven 
Years' War. 

It was after ten o'clock at night when we stopped at the neat 
little inn at Herrnhut — a late hour for so peaceful a place, — and all 
were in bed. We were curious to see by the morning light how 
far this settlement agreed with our preconceived fancies, and almost 
imagined that we could describe it beforehand. When morning 
broke, how different was the scene ! I had imagined rustic huts in 
wild and woody glens, half buried in their orchards, and wild hills 
soaring around, shaggy with woods; a quaint and picturesquely- 
clad people, of most pious air, working in their fields, their gardens, 
in their brother and sister houses, amid the singing of ancient 
hymns. Such are the fantastic tricks which a young fancy plays 
as it reads, building up far more with the material given than 
nature has built up in reality. How different was the scene as I 
looked out in the morning! Here was, in a tolerably level situa- 
tion, a tolerably square and formal little town of white and modern 
houses. People of no very particular costume were going quietly 
about. No forest hills overlooked the houses; no sound of singing- 
was heard: for aught that could be seen, it might just as well have 
been any other neat, little, still, unparticular place as Herrnhut. 
In fact, the whole country round possesses a different aspect to 
what 1 had imagined. It lies high and cold, but is characterised 



412 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

rather by great undulating plains than by hills. The woods are 
for the most part extirpated by industrious hands, and the rocks 
are groups which here and there start from the plains in a singular 
and pyramidical manner. The landscape has indeed a peculiar 
character, but by no means romantic. The horizon on different 
sides is bounded by the tops of the Riesengebirge, and the hills of 
the Saxon Switzerland. It was not till we had made a progress quite 
through the place that we began to discover its great pleasantness; 
as we came to its yet remaining woods, its wood-walks, its gardens, 
its charming though formal cemetery, its Hutberg, or Hill of the 
Watch, and saw all round the smiling fields, and the busy people 
in them, and the bounding glen, in which lie, amid their crofts and 
orchards, the populous and picturesque villages of Great Henners- 
dorf, Rennersdorf, and Bertholdsdorf, — we began to feel that it was 
still more in the spirit and institutions of the place, than in its 
external aspect, that its singular character lies. 

But before viewing these more nearly, let us devote a moment 
to its history. Count Zinzendorf was descended from an ancient 
and distinguished Austrian family, his branch of which had for 
some time settled in Saxony, and his father was a minister of state 
in high esteem. He died when the Count was an infant. His 
mother married the Prussian Field-marshal von Nazmar, and went 
to live at Berlin, leaving him to the care of his grandmother, the 
Baroness von Gersdorf, who resided on the family estate at Gross- 
Hennersdorf. Here, under her care, and that of a pious aunt, he 
was brought up with great tenderness and love of religion. It is 
indeed from these circumstances that he acquired such an uncon- 
querable attachment both to religion and to this neighbourhood, 
in which the estates of Gross-Hennersdorf and Rennersdorf were 
his inheritance. At the universities of Halle and Wittemberg he 
was distinguished for his earnest piety, and formed connexions with 
youths there of similar disposition. Amid the fiery disputes which 
at that period were going on between different religious parties, 
these young men organized an association of their own for prayer and 
mutual edification, and others, which we may notice afterwards. The 
formation of the Moravian Society in Saxony, and of the Methodist 
Society in England, which were neai'ly cotemporary, were wonder- 
fully similar. As Wesley found in his brother Charles a kindred 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 413 

spirit, who was destined to stand as his ablest champion and right- 
hand supporter, and to be his friend and constantly active coadjutor 
and counsellor through the remarkable career and the establish- 
ment of his religious body, so Zinzendorf found amongst these 
college comrades, the young Baron von Watteville, a similarly affec- 
tionate friend and fellow-labourer through life. 

At leaving the university, his mother and other friends were 
very pressing that he should take office, as through his wealth and 
connexions he was certain of rising to much greater substance and 
distinction than he even then possessed. He complied reluctantly 
with their wishes, but soon found that this life was intolerable to 
him. He had always from boyhood up entertained an ardent 
desire to do something for the advancement of Christianity. He 
could not tell what it should be, but it perpetually hovered before 
him as the great end and object of his life, and only strengthened 
with his years. He had religious meetings in his house — greatly 
to the scandal of the nobles and courtiers — to which those of his 
own way of thinking came; and he was still meditating in what 
way he should devote himself to the cause of religion, without 
having any more clear conception of the mode, when Providence 
which had no doubt prepared the work for the instrument, and the 
instrument for the work, now opened out his destined task before 
him. This, however, was displayed only by degrees; and when in 
a few years he looked round him and saw the shape which his 
labours had assumed, and the vast space over which they had 
extended themselves, he could not avoid a deep astonishment. His 
income during his minority had been accumulating. He wanted 
an investment: Bertholdsdorf, adjoining his own estates, and on 
the lands of which Herrnhut stands, was to be sold, and he bought 
it. He bought it, however, without any idea of adding to his 
worldly greatness, but with the purpose of dedicating it to the 
service of Christianity. It was a wild and woodland district; and 
he proposed to employ the people upon it, and to form them upon 
it to a religious and superior life; but the field of action was now 
prepared, and other and unexpected occupants came into it. 

Christian David, a Moravian carpenter, a descendant of an 
ancient and persecuted race, and himself a man who went far and 
wide preaching the gospel, came to the Count at Dresden, and 



414 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

informed him that in Moravia were descendants of the ancient 
Waldenses, who had fled from an exterminating persecution into 
Bohemia, who had there joined the followers of Huss, and formed 
the Taborite party. When the Jesuits and Ferdinand II. had 
begun their bloody extirpation of Protestantism in Bohemia, they 
had emigrated, when all hope of resistance was at an end; and a hun- 
dred years after they appeared again in Moravia. Here they were 
at this moment, the victims of continued persecution, and were 
casting about their eyes for a place of refuge and of rest. It was 
to the Count like a message from heaven. To save the remnant 
of this ancient church; to give it a place of retreat and restoration; 
to make it an instrument in the promotion of a purer and more 
active faith, were objects so exactly after his heart and his un- 
ceasing- desires, that he at once promised them a cordial welcome. 
Christian David set off with the glad tidings, and soon after 
appeared at Herrnhut with a band of pilgrims, who had sacrificed 
all they possessed in Moravia, to seek a more auspicious home 
there. The Count was on a journey, but Christian David planned 
with the pilgrims the place of their settlement. They pitched on 
a situation for their dwellings; and the spot where they cut down 
the first tree is now marked with a monument. It stands near 
the highway, and is still in the wood. The temporary huts only 
were raised here; the site of the village, on the arrival of the 
Count, was fixed a little short of this spot. Here then, at this 
moment, you are as much immured in the forest as the first 
settlers were, while the village itself is but a few hundred yards 
from you. Pleasant walks in all directions, are, with the best 
taste, carried through these woods from Herrnhut, so that visi- 
tors, or the inhabitants, can still please themselves with a very 
lively impression of the scene as it first appeared to the settlers; 
while a most charming rural solitude is preserved to the lovers of 
it in the place. The monument is of granite, plain, and bearing 
this inscription: 

Ann 17 Januar 1722 

Wurde 

An diese Stelle 

Zum Anbau 

Von Herrnhut 

der erste Baum 

Gefallet. 

Ps. 84, 4. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 415 

Literally — "On the 17th of January 1722, was, on this spot, for 
the building of Herrnhut, the first tree felled." The quotation from 
the Psalms is, " Well for them who dwell in thy house; who praise 
thee for evermore." The whole Psalm, indeed, is most admirably 
expressive of the situation, the desires, and the future successes 
of these pilgrims. 1. How amiable are thy dwellings, Lord of 
Sabaoth. 2. My soul desires and longs after the courts of the 
Lord; my body and soul rejoice themselves in the living God. 
3. For the bird has found a house, and the swallow her nest; there 
she cherishes her young; even thy altars, Lord of Sabaoth, my king 
and my God. 4. As above. 5. Happy are the men who hold 
thee for their strength, and from their hearts wander after thee. 
6. They go through the valley of misery, and make themselves 
wells; and the teachers are endowed with much blessing. 7. They 
go on from victory to victory, so that man must see that the true 
God is in Zion," etc. The expression in the 10th verse, " der 
Thiir hiiten in meines Gottes Hause," to watch or keep the door 
in the house of my God, is closely connected with the choice of the 
name of their community, "Herrnhiiter, the Lord's Watchers," 
and " Herrnhut," the Lord's Watch. 

An open space is left around this interesting monument, and 
the green foliage of the forest makes a living scene about this quiet 
and memorable spot. 

The Count, hastening to greet the arrival of these pilgrims, 
beheld, as he drove along the road towards Bertholdsdorf, a little on 
the right, a temporary dwelling erected on this spot, and alighting- 
hastened into it, welcomed the simple people with most cordial 
greetings, embraced them, and kneeling down with them on their 
new hearth, thanked God with them that they had at length found 
a spot of rest, and prayed for His blessing in their abode here. He 
quickly joined them in selecting the best location, and laying out 
the plan of their village. By the able and zealous aid of Christian 
David, these were soon settled, and huts raised for their present 
habitations, and the clearing of ground sufficient for their sub- 
sistence commenced. More emigrants arrived from time to time; 
the colony flourished rapidly. A zealous minister was provided 
for the neighbouring church of Bertholdsdorf, who for some time 
took also the pastoral charge of the new settlement. The more 



416 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the Count saw of this simple and truly Christian people, the more 
he learned of their faith and history, the more his heart clung to 
them, and the more he became persuaded that Providence intended, 
through them, to effect some great work. He made over the 
whole of his purchase to the purposes of his new community. 
He hastened to retire from the, to him, uncongenial court. He 
came and settled himself down permanently here. He had married 
a lady, the Grafin Reuss, the sister of one of his most dear old 
college friends, who, as the event proved, was, of all women the 
very one most adapted to his sentiments, his views, and the work 
he had before him. Able, zealous, sincerely pious, a perfect lady 
in mind, manners, and rank; she went step by step in all his 
plans with him, and took off his hands all that host of domestic 
affairs, and the superintendence of the general female affairs of the 
community, which in time came to be so weighty and multifarious. 
Never could man be said to be more happy in the gratification 
of all the objects and affections of life than Count Zinzendorf. The 
course of usefulness for which his heart had panted from a child, 
every day became more and more opened before him : in friendship 
and in love he was most fortunate. The colony flourished. The 
faith of the pilgrims was found to agree with that of the Confession 
of Augsburg, which they therefore adopted as their creed. The 
Count and they joined in moulding their ancient customs, into 
a system, which still remains as the manual of their religious, 
moral, and social practice. As I have observed, there was a great 
resemblance between the growing body of the Herrnhuters and 
that of the Methodists in England. They both scrupulously 
avoided favouring separatism, or declaring themselves a sect. They 
professed strict attachment to the established churches of their 
respective countries, yet engrafted a variety of usages upon them, 
and came permanently to worship together, and distinct from these 
churches. They were alike distinguished by a greater zeal. They 
adopted, besides the regular Sunday worship, other times and 
seasons for worship, almost daily. They had their prayer meetings, 
their singing meetings, their class or band meetings, and their 
love-feasts. They divided and subdivided themselves into lesser 
subordinate companies, for mutual prayer and edification, and 
appointed leaders and elders to each of these companies; while 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 417 

the whole community was presided over by the minister. Many 
of these institutions were no doubt borrowed by Wesley from this 
people. The most essential differences between them were, that 
the Herrnhuters lived together, many of them in large houses, 
while single; the single brothers in one, and the single sisters in 
another; all maintaining themselves by their labour, and eating at 
a common table; and that the Herrnhuters have bishops as well as 
ordinary preachers. But the Methodists in America have assimi- 
lated themselves by adopting bishops, and those in England have 
seriously for some time agitated the adoption of the same practice. 

Between Count Zinzendorf and John Wesley were still more 
striking coincidences. Their restless and indefatigable activity; 
their presiding over and directing the whole machinery of the com- 
munity; their planning and organizing so many of their projects, 
their settlements, their missions; and their great system of rule 
again by conferences and synods. John Wesley was a regular 
clergyman, and Count Zinzendorf, spite of the prejudice and indeed 
strange novelty of a nobleman becoming such, was at length regu- 
larly ordained, and for some time took the pastoral charge at 
Herrnhut, and indeed acted as such all over the world. Both 
Wesley and he, during their whole lives, from the first setting 
forward of their plan, were for ever in motion; travelling from 
station to station, and from land to land, extending, supporting, 
and invigorating their system. England, Germany, America, and 
the West Indies, were especially the scenes of their labours. 
Count Zinzendorf was four or five times in England, making long 
abodes there, having successive residences in Red Lion-square, 
Bloomsbury-square, London; Lindsey House, Chelsea, formerly be- 
longing to the Duke of Ancaster, which he bought ; and a countiy 
house, Ingatstone Hall, four-and-twenty miles from London. His 
only son, who lived to manhood, Christian Renatus Zinzendorf, an 
excellent youth, died in London, and lies in Chelsea. 

The commencement of these Moravian missions, which have 
become so wonderfully extensive, was, apparently, the result of acci- 
dent. As Count Zinzendorf was in Copenhagen in 1 731, he met with 
a negro from St. Thomas' in the West Indies, who lamented that his 
sister there could not hear the gospel. Here also he heard of the 
labours and difficulties of Hans Egede in Greenland, and a new 

E E 



418 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

world was opened to him. Missions were sent to St. Thomas', 
to Greenland, to Labrador, to the Cape, to Egypt, to Turkey, to 
the East Indies; and out of these have grown the amazing fruits 
of the Herrnhuters' great missionary zeal. No body of Christians, 
with the same means and the same members, have achieved such 
miracles; and no preachers amongst the heathen have conducted 
themselves with more faithfulness, indefatigable zeal, brotherly 
kindness, simple truth, and true and persevering sagacity. So 
early as 1823 they had sixteen settlements in Germany; three in 
Denmark; five in Sweden; one at Zeist in the Netherlands; seven- 
teen in England; one in Scotland; four in Ireland; one in Russia; 
and upwards of twenty in North America. The inhabitants of 
these settlements then amounted to about 17,000, and yet had this 
little quiet body in their various missionary stations — in Greenland, 
Labrador, North America, amongst the Indians, in the West Indies, 
South America, South Africa, and amongst the Calmucks in the 
Steppes of Asiatic Russia — no less a number of converts than 
30,000. 

There is nothing more interesting than watching the progress 
of a body like this, after ages of persecution, till it reaches that 
point of time when, like a seed buried by the hand of Providence 
below the influence of sun and air, it is turned up, and shoots and 
spreads forth on all sides for the accomplishment of some great 
end, — to see these people, who were unconsciously prepared and 
brought together for the purpose, — to watch them going hand-in- 
hand working at the plan, which is to grow beyond their own 
warmest conceptions into amazing greatness. Thus it was with 
Count Zinzendorf, his faithful patriarch Christian David, his Bohe- 
mian Pilgrims, his true friend Baron Watteville, and his admirable 
wife. There are no circumstances under which we can suppose 
human happiness so perfect, as when congenial spirits create, as it 
were, a new world to themselves; feel themselves active agents in 
the hands of Providence for human good; and with the firmest 
faith in the guidance of the Divine Spirit, go on through the 
labours of earth rejoicing towards a certain heaven, with the bless- 
ings of thousands attending them, and the grateful honour of long 
ages following them. 

And yet the way of these happy people was not all smooth. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 119 

As in all such cases, they had to encounter their share of oppo- 
sition, misrepresentation, and foulest calumny. The Count himself 
was ordered to sell his property, and was banished from his country 
ten years. England has the honour of doing more to justify them 
than any other country. The Count was warmly supported by 
Potter, the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, and a parliamentary 
inquiry justified to the whole world his fair fame, and sanctioned 
in Great Britain the establishment of his communities. 

It was, then, to us a singular pleasure to tread the ground 
where this noble and united band of Christians had first created 
themselves into a people devoted to the great cause of Christianity 
and civilization. Where they lived and loved, grew and prospered; 
and where they sent out to every quarter of the globe the most 
patient and successful labourers; and where, their day's work 
gloriously done, they laid down their heads, and there sleep in 
eternal honour. We went through every part of this quiet little 
town, partly under the guidance of the good Bishop Reichel, 
and partly of a worthy brother whom they sent to point out the 
more distant objects; through its simple church, its schools, its 
brother and sister houses, the house of direction or management 
of their affairs; through their fields, their pleasant cemetery, and 
looked from its Hutberg, or Hill of the Watch, — all of which called 
to memory many incidents connected with the first settlement. 
Of these we may speak a little more particularly. 

Herrnhut itself is a neat modern-looking little town of about 
1100 inhabitants. It is like most German modern towns, built 
with streets crossing at right angles, and of white houses. In a 
spacious square stand the little inn, the Meeting-house, the Single 
Brethren's House, and other buildings belonging to the community. 
The Single Sisters' House stands also near, facing the lower end 
or rather front of the church. Many private families live in their 
own separate houses. All is extremely neat, clean, and profoundly 
quiet. Few people are at any time seen going to and fro; and 
such a thing as a child playing in the street is not to be seen. In 
respect to education, they are very strict in their notions; and 
children, like John Wesley, are probably " taught to fear the rod, 
and cry softly." At all events they are not allowed to play in the 
street; and you hear so little of them playing anywhere, that you 

E E 2 



420 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

would be quite inclined, did you not meet some under the care of 
nurses in walks and gardens, to believe there were none; or, as has 
actually been the case here once, only one child born in the year ! 
A profound silence hovers over the whole place; and it is amazing 
that so many active persons should go forth to all parts of the 
world from a centre which seems the very centre of the realms 
of sleep. They call it themselves Life in Stillness. The whole 
manner and bearing of the people are those of such as have nothing 
to do with the passions and agitations of this world, but are living 
entirely in preparation for another. A worthy old officer, Major 
von Aderkas, whom we found here, said smiling: "I have had 
a stormy and troubled existence, and longed for a quiet haven, 
and thank God I have found it, and enjoy it from my soul; and 
here I shall end my days with thankfulness. But many come here 
who at first are struck with the repose of the place, and thinking 
nothing would be so agreeable as to spend their lives here, they 
try it, and generally think a month long enough. No, Herrnhut is 
not the place for those who have not weaned themselves thoroughly 
from the world, nor have arrived, through troubles and treacheries, 
at an abiding weariness of it." 

To the Herrnhuters themselves, their daily labour, their reli- 
gious and social meetings, their prayer and singing hours, and 
the discharge of their duties to the communities, are enjoyments 
sufficient. Every now and then they have, too, meetings for the 
reading of the news from their different missionary stations all over 
the world; and these must be times of great excitement. We went 
through the brethren and the sister house, and were much pleased 
with the quiet and neatness of every thing. Three or four persons 
form a little company, have one sitting-room where they can also 
work; and each company has its overseer for the maintenance of 
order. The men, most of them, work out in the village; the women 
in the house, sewing, knitting, and doing other women's work; and 
there is a room where all the articles made are exposed for sale. The 
Sisters' House is large and very clean, and has a nice garden. We 
saw many young girls at various employments, and were told that 
it required diligent labour for one of them to earn three Prussian 
dollars, about nine shillings, weekly. It was interesting to see in 
both houses persons who had been into distant and very different 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 421 

parts of the world, into the hottest and the coldest regions, in the 
missionary cause; and the children of missionaries who had been 
born amongst the Caffres or the Esquimaux. Each community 
had its common dining-room, where they all dined; but at three 
different tables, each at a different rate of charge, so as to accommo- 
date all persons. Poverty amongst them is no disgrace, except as 
the result of indolence or imprudence. Each community had also 
its prayer-room and assembling-room. Music is much cultivated 
amongst them; and we observed in every room appropriated to 
public or private worship an organ or piano, and in every sitting- 
room that we entered was a violin, a guitar, or flute. It was 
amusing to see the sleeping-room of the women, which, like the 
dining-room, was for general use, and stocked with a whole host 
of little German beds, each for one person. The women in their 
little white muslin caps had a certain resemblance to Friends, but 
were distinguished into married and unmarried by the ribbons 
which tied their caps being of different colours. The young- 
girls had deep red; the unmarried women, pink; the married 
women, blue; and the widows, white or grey. In the Brethren's 
House is a very excellent collection of stuffed birds and other 
objects of natural history, which missionaries from different coun- 
tries have enriched. Their church very much resembles a Friends' 
meeting : there are no pews, but plain benches, the men and 
women, like the Friends, sitting apart. They had a chair and 
desk for the preacher, and an organ distinguished the place from 
a meeting-house of Friends. Indeed, very different to the Friends, 
they have an intense love of music; and preach, pray, and sing at 
stated times and hours. We were admitted to one of their private 
singing meetings, and were surprised to see the person who pre- 
sided give out the hymn sitting, and the whole company sing it in 
the same position. They have too their love-feasts, in imitation 
of the Agape of the early Christians, at which tea and buns are 
handed round. All who entertain any enmity against each other 
are earnestly warned to absent themselves from these meetings till 
they have rooted the offence from their hearts. At the close of the 
Holy Communion each brother renews his pledge of faithfulness to 
the Lord, and gives his hand upon it to his fellow; the brethren kiss 
one anothei', and the sisters also do the same amongst themselves. 



422 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

They have, too, their times of watching, as at New Year's eve, in 
accordance with their name, Herrnhiiter, or the Lord's Watchers. 
They celebrate with high solemnity the anniversary of great occasions 
in their history,— the martyrdom of John Huss, the arrival of the 
Pilgrims, the sending out of the first mission, and many others. 
In the prayer-hall of the brothers hung garlands, which had been 
suspended on the anniversary of the building of this house itself. 
Here also hung the great picture described in the life of the Count, 
which he caused to be painted in 1747, to commemorate the first 
triumphs of their missionary labours. The Saviour is represented 
surrounded by the natives of all countries where they had now 
made converts, — the American Indian, the Greenlander, the Esqui- 
maux, the Hottentot, the Negro, the Asiatic, etc. etc.; all as large 
as life, and each in his national costume. 

It is known that they seek the guidance of Providence with the 
utmost faith in all their public or more important acts. Even the 
time for holding their synods and conferences, and the decision of 
great questions in them, are determined by lot. Once a year they 
select by lot a number of texts, one for each day, from which they 
preach and exhort, and they have the firmest faith that these texts 
will be most applicable to the nature and events of the time. In 
this they followed not only the custom of the old Bohemian Bro- 
thers, as ordered at the Synod of Lhota in 1467, but also that of the 
Apostles, as in the choice of Matthias. They may contract mar- 
riages by mutual agreement, under the approbation of the elders, but 
they also frequently resort to the lot to determine them ; and nothing 
is more common than for a missionary to send home, requesting 
them to choose him a wife, who is thus selected. The damsel on 
whom the lot falls has the liberty to decline the match if she please, 
but as it is regarded as a clear indication of the will of Providence, 
it is generally cheerfully acquiesced in, and a young woman will at 
once prepare herself, on being chosen, to go north or south — to 
the snowy fields of Labrador, or the burning deserts of Africa. 
The Herrnhuters declare that scarcely an instance has been known 
in which these marriages have not been completely happy ones. 

Having seen the principal of their institutions and modes of 
life in the village, we prepared to take a survey of the other parts 
of the settlement. We wandered into the woods; visited the monu- 



GKRMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 423 

nient of the first clearing, already mentioned; strolled through the 
gardens belonging to the community, where quiet-looking ladies 
and nurses with quiet children were walking; and then directed 
our steps to the Friedhof, or cemetery. This lies on an elevated 
slope above the village, and is very conspicuous by its extent and 
form. It contains several acres, is square, and fenced by a lofty 
hedge, or rather trimmed green wall of hornbeam. Over the 
entrance is inscribed 

Christus ist auferstanden von den Todten 

Er ist der Erstling worden unter denen die da schlafen : 

" Christ is arisen from the dead: he is become the first-born among 
those who there sleep." 

Within, the Friedhof, or Court of Peace, as the Germans 
commonly call their burying-grounds — or as frequently Gottes 
Acker, God's Field, is intersected with avenues also of hornbeam 
trees, and at each corner and at the end of each avenue is an 
arbour of the same. The whole place is wonderfully neat. No 
separate family burying-place is allotted; all are buried in regular 
rows, as they die, and on each grave lies a simple slab with an 
inscription. The only exception to this rule is made in the case of 
the family of the founder. In the centre of the four principal 
crossing avenues stands a row of eight massy altar tombs. These 
are the tombs of Count Zinzendorf, and his immediate family and 
friends, the first founders and champions of the Herrnhut com- 
munity. The two centre ones are those of the Count and Countess 
Zinzendorf. On their right lie Sophia Theodora, Gr'afin Reuss, 
the beloved cousin of Count Zinzendorf, and wife of his friend 
Count Reuss, who ended her days here; Elizabeth von Watteville, 
the Count Zinzendorf 's daughter; and Frederick Rudolph, Frei- 
herr von Watteville, her husband. On his left hand lies Anna 
Nitschmann, the Count's second wife; Frederick von Watteville, 
his old friend and first Civil Senior here; and last, Binigna Justina 
von Watteville, the Count's daughter, married to the adopted son 
of Baron Watteville, Johannes, one of the Count's most attached 
and active friends. The inscription on the tomb of this excellent 
woman says justly she was, " Eine treue Magd des Herrn, mid 
gesegnete Dienerin der Briider-Gemeinen in der Alten und Neuen 
Welt, unter mancherley Gefahren zu Land und See ; welche hier 



424 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

starb 1789." — A true handmaid of the Lord, and blessed servant 
of the Congregations of the Brethren, in the Old and New World, 
amid many perils both by land and sea; who died here 1789. 

Many old servants and cotemporaries well known to the readers 
of the history of the founding of this settlement, lie around, and 
amongst them that fine old patriarch Christian David. Others 
of the earliest here have only mere numerals inscribed on their 
stones, either because they were contented to be recognised only 
by their friends, or because their names could be found recorded 
in the register of the brethren. At the first crossing lies the stone 
of the first person interred here, Hans Beyer, a child, in 1730, 
thus shewing that the Friedhof was not laid out till eight years 
after the building of Herrnhut. 

Their funerals must be the most striking of their ceremonies ; 
and as the Friedhof is some distance from the village, on an open 
ascent, the road also marked out by an avenue of trees, the spec- 
tacle must be very conspicuous. The funeral takes place in the 
afternoon or evening, when general attendance is more convenient. 
The Community assembles in the general hall, where an address is 
made, and a short account of the life of the deceased is read. The 
musical choir heads the train with trumpets, playing hymn-tunes. 
The coffin, of a bright colour, covered with a white shroud adorned 
with garlands and ribbons, is borne by the brothers in their usual 
dress. The relatives follow next, but not clad in mourning, and 
then follow the whole community; the men and the women in 
separate bodies. A circle is formed round the grave. Several 
stanzas of a hymn are sung, accompanied by the music, while the 
coffin is let down into the grave. The preacher and the community 
pray in the words of their Liturgy, and the scene is closed with 
the church blessing. 

On Easter-day at sun-rise the Community also make a solemn 
procession to the Friedhof, with a band of music and singing. 
There the Easter litany is recited, and the names of all who have 
been there interred since the last Easter solemnity, are pronounced 
aloud, and their memory thus revived in the hearts of their friends. 

Just above the Friedhof, and on the crown of the eminence stands, 
on one of the singular groups of rocks which so peculiarly mark 
this landscape, a sort of temple or watch-house. This is the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 425 

Hat-berg, or Watch-hill. From this building the whole country 
round to a vast extent is seen, with various mountains rearing 
themselves in different directions, amongst them the lofty remark- 
able peak, called Die S'achsische Krone — the Crown of Saxony. 
Here too lies sloping down on all sides from this point around you, 
the noble estate conferred on the community by Count Zinzendorf. 
On one side in its whiteness, and amid its gardens, Herrnhut; 
near it, the original woods and pleasant wood-walks. On the 
opposite side runs along a pleasant glen a string of villages, Gross 
Hennersdorf, Bennersdorf, and last, Bertholdsdorf, amongst its 
lofty trees. In Bertholdsdorf lives also a bishop, where they have a 
large establishment. Here is also the house which Count Zinzen- 
dorf built, and wherein he died. This is now the Direction-house, 
or Government-house; and in the council-room is an admirable 
portrait of the Count, and also some of some other of their worthies. 
The property is vested for life in the Gr'afin Einsiedel, the present 
female head of the Sisters' House in Herrnhut, the laws of 
Saxony forbidding property to be held by corporations. A little 
beyond the house stands on this woody slope of the glen, the old 
church of Bertholdsdorf, in which the first pastor, Bothe, and Count 
Zinzendorf used to preach. A fine avenue of trees planted along 
the road connects Bertholdsdorf with Herrnhut. 

The whole scene is one of great interest. The people are busy 
in the fields. All is well cultivated ; all is neat and flourishing. 
It has the air of a settlement in some primitive country, where the 
whole body is bound together by one faith and one heart. Such 
is Herrnhut, the quiet but active head-colony of one of the most 
remarkable of communities, whether regarded on account of their 
thorough renouncement of the world and its desires, or for the 
miracles of civilization which they have effected from pole to pole, 
with a handful of simple, pious, and indefatigable people. 

We felt ourselves well repaid for our visit, and returned by a 
new track towards the Saxon Switzerland, through a country where 
the benefits introduced by them were equally visible. The whole 
district was one of pleasant alternation of hill and dale. Along the 
sweet woody valleys ran the richest meadows, the clearest streams, 
and the most extraordinary rows of gay cottages. I call them gay, 
for they were built on one uniform but showy plan. One half of 



426 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

each house was erected on round wooden arches, the other half 
plain. These arches, the doors, and windows, were all painted with 
the brightest colours, especially yellow, red, and green. Wherever 
the long valleys extended, for miles and miles extended the rows 
of these gaudy cottages, each in its orchard-garden, and with its 
pretty green crofts on the slopes behind, the hill tops being covered 
with woods. The gardens were full of gay autumn flowers, — as 
dahlias, asters, and hollyhocks; the orchards full of fruit. In the 
houses sate the men and their sons at their looms, and in the crofts 
were the wives and daughters watering the linen, which lay on the 
sweet grass in immense expanses, whitening the whole country 
as with snow. As whole families were out merrily in the fields 
collecting in their grain, one could not but feel how striking the 
contrast to this happy scene were the manufacturing districts of 
our own country, where, whatever spinning-jennies may have done 
for the nation at large, they have introduced the most frightful 
masses of misery amongst the people; while here the hand-worker, 
retaining his independence, alone leads that life which an industrious 
hand-worker, and in fact every one of God's creatures, should. 

The scriptural quotations at pp. 415 and 423, are literally translated from the 
German Bible; and in the inscription at p. 414, Ps.84, 4, is lxxxiv. 3 of the English 
Bible. 

13. JOURNEY TO LEIPSIC AND BERLIN. 

The space devotable to these characteristics of cities and scenery 
warns me to be brief. We must away over the great plains of the 
North without much dallying. Luckily, here steam offers its rapid 
wing, and the country, with very little variety of feature, demands 
as little notice. The north, indeed, seems the very land for the 
growing of corn and laying down of railroads. Vast plains extend 
everywhere, for the most part so many enormous corn-fields, and 
one wonders where the produce can be consumed, till we recollect 
the forty millions of German population. In all directions of the 
cultivated but monotonous plains, railways whirl you from one city 
to another, and unlike the romantic hill countries of the south and 
west, you see nothing on your way that you long to stop for. 
Thus we flew over such a plain from Dresden to Leipsic in four 
hours, with little of novelty except the huge flocks and herds. 

One thing which surprises an Englishman is to see what 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 427 

wretched creatures are the sheep which produce the famous Saxony 
wool, compared with our fat and comely flocks. They resemble most 
our south-downs, but are lean and wretched looking. In fact, it 
is a prevailing idea that the leaner the sheep the finer the wool. 
It is the wool to which all the attention of the grower is devoted, 
and therefore, generally speaking, a more miserable assemblage of 
animals than a flock of German sheep is not to be seen. They 
are not allowed like ours to wander in meadows and enclosed fields. 
Meadows are few, are mown repeatedly for hay ; and downs they 
as little possess. Those beautiful green, and as it were, velvet 
hills are nowhere to be seen. Their hills are covered with woods 
or vineyards. On the plains they wander under the care of a 
shepherd, and for the most part on fallows and stubbles, to pick 
up odds and ends rather than to enjoy a regular pasture. You 
may see them penned on a blazing fallow, where not a trace of 
vegetable matter is to be seen, for the greater part of a summer's 
day, which in this climate is pretty much like being roasted alive. 
Here all in a mass, they stick their heads under one another to 
avoid the glare and the plague of flies. For what purpose they 
are here, except to starve and melt them into leanness, I never 
could discover. The shepherds are armed, instead of crooks, with 
a sort of spud, or little spade with a long handle, and of a hollow 
form, with which, from time to time, they dig up a little earth, 
and fling at any stragglers or loiterers. Contrary to our custom, 
and according to that of scriptural times, the flock follows them, 
and not they the flock. The sheep besides being lean are generally 
dreadfully lame with that pestilent complaint the foot-rot, and 
their keepers apparently trouble themselves very little about it. 
As leanness and not fat is considered an advantage, this lameness 
may even be an advantage too. It is not to be supposed that the 
mutton is very tempting; nothing, in fact, can be more lean, dry, 
and tasteless, than German mutton; a leg of which is often not 
bigger than the leg of a tolerable terrier. There has been started 
in Wurtemberg, a Horse-flesh-eating Society, which has lately had 
several public dinners at Tubingen, to feast upon and recommend 
the use of horse-flesh. Here learned professors and leading gen- 
tlemen adorning their practice with the fine Greek name of Hippo- 
hagen, have devoured horse-flesh in all modes of cookery — roast, 



428 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

boiled, stewed, in steaks, and in soup. This, which to the luxuri- 
ous lover of the "roast-beef of old England," must appear a 
dreadful mania, would not appear so extravagant after dining a few 
times on some German mutton. 

But away over the plains. In Leipsic even we will make brief 
stay. Its characteristics are better known to Englishmen than 
those of any other German city, except Hamburgh. It is the city 
of trade and of publishers. As a city, it is large, compact, and 
good, but has no very striking features, if we except its new 
university and post-office, and its quaint old Rath-Haus ; while its 
situation is on a dead level. A few days then will suffice here. 
We must traverse its public walks and suburban gardens, especially 
its woodland Rosenthal, which is full of fine avenues and trees of 
noblest size. We must, of course, walk too through its fair (luckily 
opening as we arrived), with its bazaars of all imaginable things; 
through its cloth halls, and its warehouses of innumerable books. 
We must descend into Auerbach's cellar, in compliment to Goethe 
and Dr. Faustus. See the old book containing the legend of 
Dr. Faustus, which is said to have been kept here for two hundred 
years, and probably gave Goethe the idea of writing Faust, as he 
used to read it when frequenting this cellar with other students. 
We must drink wine there, though we shall get none of Mephis- 
topheles' table-wine. Being the fair time, we must also eat larks 
in Eckerlin's cellar, the most celebrated in the city for its good 
suppers, of which the throngs of respectable people in those hot 
and handsome underground rooms give evidence. We must ascend 
the observatory, to survey the scene of the memorable Volker- 
schlacht, or Battle of the Nations, in 1813, when nearly half a 
million of men under the walls of the city contested fiercely for 
three days the fate of Europe; when Prussians and Germans, 
people and students, stood up en masse to crush the bloody modern 
Moloch — and did it. We must see from the same spot, through 
the telescope, the distant towers of Liitzen, where Gustavus i\.dol- 
phus also closed his career. We must enjoy a little of the intelli- 
gent society of our countrymen to be found here, especially of our 
friends Mr. Monica, and Mr. Moriarty, the excellent translator of 
Boz and of Hook, and then once more on our way towards Berlin. 

From Dresden to Leipsic, seventy-five English miles, reduced 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 429 

in transit from ten hours to four; from Leipsic to Berlin upwards 
of one hundred, reduced from nineteen hours to six, — is not that, 
over wearisome levels, a great subject of great travelling thankful- 
ness? Here, when we have shot past the old University towers 
of Halle, and the gates of Witternberg, where Luther roasted the 
Pope's Bull, what is there? Vast regions of bare and burning 
sand; villages, few and far between; and woods of stunted firs, the 
ground under which is hoar with a thick carpeting of reindeer 
moss. This is the country which conducts you to the capital of 
Prussia. We seem scouring across the deserts of Arabia, and 
wonder where so many Europeans can be going. We have a train 
as enormous as the individual carriages are in Austria. Betwixt 
Vienna and Baden you get into carriages that more resemble 
chapels, each containing sixty people; here you have a train con- 
taining a thousand; you travel through a solitary country, but by 
no means in a solitude. Every hour bears you into a more thorough 
wilderness of pure sand; and when you arrive, you wonder how 
the capital of a great kingdom came into such a place. 

14. BERLIN. 

We look, indeed, about for some particular advantage to re- 
commend the choice of Berlin. We wonder whence come all the 
articles of life, vegetables, fruit, and meat, to support three hundred 
thousand people. Not a single natural feature renders it attrac- 
tive. Besides its location in this wide sandy wilderness, it is built 
on so dead a level that they have never been able to this hour to 
drain it ; but before every house, in the very best parts of it, ay, in 
the immediate vicinity of the palace itself, lies a stinking festering 
kennel, rank with bubbles of a putrid effervescence. So accustomed 
are the inhabitants to this, that they do not even cover it over. 
There it is, open to the day. Children roll into it as they play 
in the streets, and the whole city has the odour of a great sink. 
Yet again, so insensible has custom made the inhabitants to this 
nuisance, that when we spoke of it they said, " 0, was that anything 
uncommon? They thought that was the smell of all cities!" 
The bills of mortality, however, are not so unconscious of this; for 
they place Berlin amongst the very lowest on their scale. London, 
with its vast population, has but one annual death in about fifty; 
Berlin, one in thirty. 



430 CHARACTERISTICS OP 

Iii the portico of the Museum, opposite to the palace, we ob- 
served Cornelius at work, adorning it with fresco paintings; and 
we could not but regard it as a curious inversion of things, that 
the worthy king should have begun to embellish his city with 
splendid public frescoes, before he had drained off this wholesale 
sink from his own doors and those of his subjects. A fine fresco 
on a wall aboye you, and a rank sink fuming under your nostrils 
as you stop to observe it, is a somewhat odd conjunction of things. 
Many gentlemen contended that the drainage of the city was 
impossible; that the level was so perfect that not a foot of descent 
could be obtained. But we observed that the Sprey runs through 
the city very well, and where a river runs, sinks may be made to 
run into it. We were glad to hear that the king had resolved to 
attempt it, and had engaged a celebrated engineer to make the 
necessary survey, and it is to be hoped that this shocking draw- 
back to the pleasantness of so fine a city may be removed. The 
river Sprey itself, which runs through the city in three different 
channels instead of one good stream, is often no better than a 
sink itself. The water is obliged to be hoarded up, by means of 
locks, in order to swim in and out the boats which navigate it; and 
one hour you may find a tolerable stream of water, and the next 
a black, empty, and noisome channel. This is also close to the 
palace. The royal family, however, does not seem very sensitive 
to such things. It is a family which is haunted by mills. The 
mill at Potzdam, which stood close to Sans Souci, and of which 
the miller, so far from being willing to sell it to Frederick the 
Great, to enable him to complete his garden on that side of his 
palace, even threatened to commence an action against him if he 
attempted to interfere with it, all the world has heard of. Frederick 
was obliged to leave it standing; its great sails whirling round 
before his windows, as if in defiance. The miller's descendants 
having fallen into poverty, the last possessor offered to sell it to 
the king, who however refused to buy it, saying it was become a 
piece of national history, and even settled a pension on the man 
to enable him to carry it on. It has since been purchased by the 
present king; but still stands close to the garden, though much 
dilapidated, and probably will not be removed while a piece will 
remain of it. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 431 

But, what is odd enough, there is a mill also in Berlin, exactly 
opposite to the palace, and no farther off than the width of a narrow 
street. The mill here is, moreover, of a much more annoying 
description. It is a water-mill, with steam attached, so that 
whether there be water in the Sprey, on which it stands, or not, 
it is still going, day and night; and throws its noise very lustily 
against the palace. As we have passed by in the night, we have 
been astonished at the larum it made. Such a thins: one could not 
have imagined as existing for a single day had we not seen it. 

But, like the King of Prussia with his frescoes, we are putting 
the cart a little before the horse; let us look at Berlin as a whole, 
and that whole is a fine one. It strikes you, as you traverse it for 
the first time, as the fitting capital of a kingdom so powerful; and 
when you arrive in the neighbourhood of the palace, you have 
rarely had a finer scene before you. Here, standing in what is 
called the Schloss Freiheit, or Liberty of the Castle, that is, a fine 
ample square, before the palace, you have one of the finest spec- 
tacles before you of any city of Europe. On your right hand one 
great faqade of the palace, which is an immense square building 
including two courts, the front, in fact, looking towards the mill. 
The palace can boast no great charms of architecture, but is im- 
pressive, from its extent and loftiness. This facade is vast and 
stately. Behind you is a modern church; on your right hand, on 
the other side of the square, the Museum, a fine Grecian building 
with a noble portico running the whole length of the front, and 
which. Cornelius is now engaged in embellishing with frescoes. In 
the centre of the square plays a splendid fountain, and before the 
Museum stands a gigantic vase of syenite, or red granite, beauti- 
fully polished. 

Standing thus in this superb square, before you stretches in 
a direct line the magnificent street called Unter-den-Linden, or 
Under-the-Limes. This street is at least half-a-mile in length; of 
great width, and presenting, right and left, the most beautiful 
buildings which the city contains : and at the far end, over a rich 
grove of lime trees which run up the middle of the farther half of 
the street, is the figure of Victory in her car, drawn by four horses 
abreast, and seeming to be advancing through the air into a city 
worthy to receive her. On each corner of the front of the Museum, 



432 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 

on your right hand, is a figure of a rearing horse held by a man, 
and a fanciful eye might imagine that their excitement arose also 
from observing the approach of Victory. 

If you advance, the first building on your right hand is the 
Zeug-Haus, or Arsenal. This is much lauded by the knowing- 
ones of Berlin as a perfect piece of architecture. It strikes me as 
too low for its extent, and the heaps of sculptured trophies piled 
on its top as too ponderous for the height. Then comes the 
Sing Academie, the Guard-house, the University, and on the 
opposite side, several palaces, the theatre, and public library. On 
each side of the guard-house stands a marble statue; one is that 
of General B'ulow, the other of General Scharnhorst. Nearly 
opposite stands a very fine bronze statue of Bllicher, as if in the 
act of uttering his favourite command, "Forw'arts, Kinder, for- 
w'arts!" " Forwards, Children, forwards!" The pedestal is richly 
embellished with bas-relievos of different battles. As you advance 
under the lime grove, the houses on each side of the street assume 
a more private character, with various shops interspersed; and as 
you issue forth at the far end, you are equally surprised at the 
chaste nobility of the Brandenburg Thor, after the model of the 
Propylseum at Athens, with the car of Victory upon it; and at the 
lowness and meanness of the houses around. Old Jahn the phi- 
losopher, when master of the school of gymnastics here, was wont, 
during the war, to ask his boys, as he took them a walk through 
this gate, what they were thinking of; and if they replied " nothing 
particular," he gave them a box on the ear, and told them they 
ought to be thinking that the French had carried the car of Victory 
away to Paris, and praying to see it back again. It might not be 
amiss if some second Jahn were to set his boys praying to have 
some more accordant houses raised in connexion with this fine 
gate, and at the same time a great nuisance removed from the out- 
side of it. This gate leads into the Thiergarten, a fine park, full 
of woodland walks; but by the city gate stand quantities of the 
most wretched Stellwagen, each calculated to hold twenty persons, 
and yet many of them furnished only with one horse, and such a 
horse! The Germans are, generally, very kind to their horses; 
but the hacks of Berlin present a melancholy exception. No- 
where, not even in our beloved city of London, are such lamentable 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 433 

specimens of living misery and oppression to be seen in public 
vehicles. 

As we diverge from this magnificent street, Unter-den-Linden, 
we soon perceive that it has concentrated into itself almost all that 
is fine in the city. The old town, which comes up very near to the 
other side of the palace, is in comparison mean, close, and dingy. 
The new extends in enormous lengths of white and monotonous 
streets. We are glad to return to Unter-den-Linden, with its 
open and gracious presence. Here lie abundant treasures for the 
inspection of the curious. The Palace contains many excellent 
paintings; historical and antiquarian objects, and elegant works of 
manual art. The Museum has its various and noble halls of sculp- 
ture, painting, minerals, coins, books, and engravings. The Gallery 
of paintings presents nothing like the gems of Dresden, yet many 
fine productions of the great masters, and is curious for its ample 
collection of pictures of the Byzantine and/ old German schools. 
Convents and churches have here yielded up their ancient treasures; 
and Professor Waagen, well known for his work on art in England, 
has arranged these so as to afford to the spectator a clear idea of 
the progress of painting in these schools. The theatres, Italian and 
German operas, are all well conducted, and the latter then num- 
bered amongst its singers Mademoiselle Lowe. The stranger who 
can procure admittance to the meetings of the Sing Verein, held in 
the Sing Academie, a lovely building presented to them by the 
king, will find upwards of two hundred of the most respectable 
young people of the city, there singing the finest pieces of the 
great masters in a noble style, under the direction of the royal 
Capel-meister. There is not a more beautiful sight nor a more 
delightful recreation to be enjoyed in Germany. 

The architecture of Berlin owes its noblest features to the royal 
Bau-meister Schinkel. The people of Berlin claim for him even 
a higher rank than for Von Klenze of Munich; but, without 
awarding this, we must allow him great merit, and in nothing 
more than in his improvements introduced into buildings of brick. 
There is a church built by him of brick, and also a large building 
facing the Sprey, near the Hotel de Russie. In these he has 
introduced friezes, bass-relievos, corbel figures, ornamental window 
jambs, door-heads, etc., of brick; an original idea, and shewing 

p p 



434 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

what elegance and variety may now be introduced into buildings of 
this material. These are modelled in clay, or may be made in 
moulds, and then burnt with the rest of the bricks. Thus the 
most delicate tracery, leaves, flowers, fruit, living figures, anything 
which can be hewn in stone, may be also modelled in clay, and 
burnt, for ornamental architecture, and retains a cleanness and 
sharpness equal to stone or metal. 

Berlin has its public gardens, and its popular music and dances, 
as well as any other German city; but they who do not care to 
visit these will find pleasure in walking as far as the Kreuzberg, 
a little eminence, a novelty here, at a little distance from the city, 
on which is erected a Gothic cross or monument of metal, in memory 
of those who died in the war; and figures of the chief leaders in 
it occupy niches, and the names of all the great battles in which 
the Prussians were engaged, are exhibited on the different sides. 
Charlottenburg, a few miles from Berlin, is also not only a charming 
palace in extensive and pleasant gardens, but of great interest from 
the reposing statue of the amiable Queen Louise, by Rauch, which 
is in a little temple in the garden. 

But Potzdam is the great paradise of this neighbourhood, as 
we may be allowed to call it, for though nearly twenty English 
miles distant, a railway conveys you there in forty minutes. Here 
the scene is indeed changed ! Here, instead of sand and monotony, 
you have hills, water, woods, every thing which is attractive in 
nature. What a splendid situation were this for a capital! The 
city on the plain, backed by those beautiful hills, with every 
possible variety of site for villas and pleasure gardens. What woods 
and hills, and the beautiful river Havell spreading itself broad and 
winding, like a succession of fine lakes. Why was not Berlin 
placed where Potzdam is? Possibly the Havell, broad as it looks, 
may not be so navigable as the Sprey, and there may lie the secret, 
or what a capital would it be here ! 

Frederick the Great, however, duly appreciated the beauty of 
this neighbourhood. Here he delighted to retire. Steam has now 
converted Potzdam into a suburb of Berlin, and pours on all holi- 
days its thousands into it, without which Potzdam were a retire- 
ment and a solitude still, for grass grows in its streets. But who 
cares for Potzdam itself, as it lies in its hollow, with its great old 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 435 

palace, and great old public buildings and barracks, and avenues 
of great trees, except that its old church contains the tomb of 
Frederick the Great, on which Napoleon heaped the incense of his 
praise, and from which he stole the old warrior's sword. But the 
hills on the Havell, and the views of the Havell from them, the 
rich meadows, the wild forest scenes — these are what justify Frede- 
rick's fondness for this spot, and who can enough enjoy them ? 
That Frederick enjoyed them, the palaces which he has scattered 
through them with an extraordinary prodigality, sufficiently testify : 
the palace in Potzdam, the palace of Sans Souci, the Marble Palace, 
the New Palace. That the present race enjoy them, various lovely 
villas, as the Charlottenhof, Griinecke, and others shew. That the 
last king enjoyed them, the Pfauen-Insel is a charming proof. If 
any one wishes to find the lost fairyland, he must steer his course 
along the Havell, through a wilderness of pine woods to the Pfauen- 
Insel, and there he will acknowledge that he has discovered it. 
Around amid hills shaggy with forests the Havell pours its deep 
and dark waters like an inland sea. The world is shut out by the 
bosky shores and deep pine woods of unknown regions, and in the 
embracing flood lies the most delicious region which a poet's fancy 
could conjure up, or which nature and art, in mutual labour, can 
construct from the ordinary materials of this earth. Shores of 
softest green, most ravishing lawns, flowers of superbest dyes and 
in gorgeous masses, trees of stateliest growth and gracefullest 
beauty of pendant boughs, invite you ever to scenes where you may 
wander for hours, and every few moments encounter some new 
surprise. Here feudal towers rise above the flood, with heraldic 
banners flapping over the battlements; here stately barge and light 
shallop lie anchored in some lonely creek; here slope sunny uplands 
under scattered oaks, where the shepherd watches his flock. Here 
you come upon a noble conservatory, beautiful with the palms and 
dates and glorious blossoms of tropical regions, and aromatic with 
their odours. If you would have any illusion to persuade you, 
beyond the charms of nature and of summer, that you are in a 
region of enchantment, you have it. You hear the roar of the lion, 
the cry of the jackal, and the scream of birds unknown in these 
climates. You imagine that some scene in Tasso or Ariosto is 
about to be repeated, and find actually wild beasts of all sorts in 

p f % 



436 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

different dens and cages in various parts of the island, as if some 
hero had conquered the place for his own abode, and bound its 
savage tenants for his daily amusement. Wild deer, wild swine, 
bears, the ostrich, and many others, of graceful or shaggy shapes, 
meet your eyes in your wanderings round this island. Such were 
the amusements of a king here, after he had helped to bind the 
great wild beast of the age on the rocks of St. Helena; and a more 
enchanting scene for a day's excursion he could not have left for 
the pleasure of his subjects. 

Amongst the numerous royal palaces we must say a good word 
for the New Palace, as it is called, although it has been often and 
much abused. If not in the purest taste, it still possesses a certain 
grandeur in its enormous extent, and prodigality of colonnades, por- 
ticoes, and statues connected with it. It lies low, in the meadow 
below Potzclam, but has a fine solitude of woods and quaint gardens 
about it. It is itself a good and cheerful house, and contains many 
paintings of much merit and beauty. It has also a theatre, in 
which have recently been represented, before the court, some of the 
dramatic pieces of Tieck. If this palace were inhabited by the king, 
with a full and gay court, it would, with the necessary life and 
bustle about it, produce far from a despicable impression. 

Then there is, in the wood near, that little temple containing 
the second and most beautiful reposing figure of the late Queen by 
Rauch. We had heard this effigy much praised for its beauty; 
but the beauty is that of mind and heart. Representatives of far 
higher physical beauty we have often seen. The somewhat high 
cheek bones, the shape of the nose, and the general contour indeed 
of the countenance, depart from the pure ideal of personal beauty, 
but a still higher beauty distinguishes this charming statue. It is 
that perfect sweetness of disposition; that spirit baptized in heavenly 
affection; that wife-like devotion; that high and dauntless, and 
holy patriotism, dwelling in a meek and lowly nature, which made 
this excellent queen adored by the people when alive, and which 
glorify here her image in the cold stone. When we call to mind 
how she mourned over and strove for the fortunes of her country; 
how she resisted its tyrant, when kings and men lay prostrate 
before him; how meekly firm she stood his haughty insolence, 
when in her he sought to crush the influence of woman and of 






GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 437 

virtue against him, though she inwardly bled beneath his base 
calumnies; how, night and day, she exerted herself to breathe ever 
new courage and moral strength into a corrupt and demoralized 
race, and sunk exhausted in spirits and in strength; — we then seem 
indeed to behold, in this pure face and figure, the real image of 
her sufferings and her virtues. If ever there was a saint canonized 
by her sympathy with human sorrows, and by her generous self- 
sacrifice, it was the Queen Louise. How deeply do we feel the 
words contained in one of her letters, as we look on this face, 
" Posterity will not place me amongst its great queens; but if it 
speak of me at all, it will at least say, that I have suffered much 
with constancy and Christian resignation." How well do we com- 
prehend the flame of that indignation which burst from every 
manly heart in Prussia, as it heard of the death of this angelic 
woman, and thought of the unmanly Corsican, whose taunts and 
tyrannies had been heaped on her gentle breast. Never was fuller 
poetical justice decreed. What his injuries against the nation 
could not effect, his injuries against her achieved — the people rose 
in wrath, and he was annihilated. How well, too, do we compre- 
hend the mind of the king when, enjoying once more peace and 
a free throne, he used daily to stand for hours by this fair image 
of her who had spent heart and strength to win back for him and 
Prussia these blessings. 

Not far from this palace is Charlottenhof, the beautiful little 
villa in the Herculaneum style built by the present king, when 
Crown-prince, for himself. It is fitted up with a simplicity befitting 
a private gentleman, but with a classical purity of taste which 
makes all beautiful. But Sans Souci is the great attraction of the 
neighbourhood. It is a mere villa perched on a hill just above Potz- 
dam, and surrounded by the most lovely views over the meadows 
and wild woody banks of the Havell. The hill on which it stands 
is crowned with gardens in successive terraces. As you approach 
through the fine meadows and beneath a noble avenue of trees, 
broad flights of steps, ascending from terrace to terrace up to the 
house, and the lower part of the house half concealed from view 
by the swell of the hill, give a very singular appearance to the. 
whole. It seems as if the house was surrounded by a piazza, and 
that those flights of steps ascended to the top, instead of to the 



438 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

bottom of the building. As we ascended these long flights of steps, 
successive terraces of the garden shewed themselves right and left, 
with their vines and fig-trees loaded with fruit, and with quantities 
of golden gourds, each perfectly round, large enough to fill a 
wheelbarrow, lying about; and flowers, in richest autumnal hues, 
glowed around. Arrived on the summit, nothing can be conceived 
more delicious. The fine views over the lovely country; the 
gardens all below you; the space before the palace full of beds of 
gayest flowers, and orange trees standing everywhere in blossom, 
diffusing through the whole air their delicious aroma. Trees of 
splendid growth added their beauty to the spot; the mill of the 
sturdy old miller shewing itself amongst them; and from a circular 
colonnade, on the other side of the house, a brownish, wildish, burnt- 
up sort of a country, with windmills, and an artificial ruin of a 
Grecian temple on a woody hill opposite, constructed with better 
effect than such things generally are, presented a fit landscape for 
an old painter. 

Every part of this place abounds with recollections of the vic- 
torious old Friz. At each end of the garden, in a green plot, are 
the graves of his horse and dogs, eleven in number, he having 
ordered himself to be laid there to complete the dozen; an order 
not complied with. In the house remain many memorials of him; 
amongst them the clock, which stopped exactly as he died, and his 
library, in which his own works are conspicuous. One volume of 
his poems stood open at this curious passage: 

Mais, quels sont ces cries d'Alegresse ! 

Quels Chants! Quelles acclamations ! 

Les Francais plein de son yvresse 

Semble vainqueur des Nations. 

II Test; et voila qui s'avance 

La Pompe du jeune Louis: 

L'Anglais a perdu sa Balance, 

L'Autricien, son insolence, , 

Et la Batave encore surpris 

En grondant benit La Clemence 

De ce Heros, dont l'indulgence — 

The wall of the room occupied here by Voltaire is painted all 
over monkeys and parrots. They tell you that Frederick, being- 
desirous to have a portrait of the ugly old Frenchman, to which he 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 4o9 

would not consent, the king employed a painter to observe him by 
stealth from the next room whenever the door was opened, which 
Voltaire becoming aware of, clapped a screen before his table; and 
Frederick, to mortify him, caused the whole of the walls of his 
room, the first opportunity, to be thus adorned with monkeys and 
parrots, as indicative of his person and loquacity. Poor Frederick 
paid dearly in his lifetime, in annoyance, for his propensity to 
French philosophy; and his country paid still more so for it after 
his death. The infidelity which he had introduced grew to such 
a pitch that it totally demoralized and effeminated the nation. The 
nobles, who filled all offices in state and army, became sensual, 
debauched, and worthless, because they had abandoned the prin- 
ciples and prospects of Christianity, and had no higher objects than 
to live most voluptuously their day. The inundation of the French 
therefore, even while they were still boasting of the fame of Frede- 
rick, and vainly still calling themselves the invincible heirs of his 
tactics, swept them away like smoke before a wind. The great 
nation, which had been created by his arms, was thus ruined by 
his principles; and it was only by the most severe chastisement of 
Providence, that worthier notions and restoration were acquired 
together. 

In the Queen's room we observed garlands hanging in honour of 
the birthdays of herself and of the King, which had been brought 
in by the people of the neighbourhood. These are amongst those 
simple testimonies of popular affection which are so often to be 
seen in Germany. And spite of the fact that the king has not 
better kept his promise made at his Huldegung than the other 
sovereigns of Germany did theirs, made at the grateful moment of 
peace achieved by the aid of their subjects, to give their people a 
constitution; yet he has done so much for the improvement of their 
laws and social condition, and leads with his amiable wife so simple 
and open-hearted a life amongst them, that no monarch can be 
more highly honoured or sincerely beloved. As Prussia, moreover, 
has now acquired a solid and powerful expanse of empire, he has 
adopted the true course of political sagacity, and determined to 
elevate his people by intelligence, and render his reign illustrious 
through science and art. He has, therefore, called around him many 
of the ablest men of Germany : Schelling and Cornelius from Munich ; 



440 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the brothers Grimm, the celebrated collectors of the " Kinder und 
Haus Marchen/' who were expelled from his dominions, with five 
other independent professors, by the tyrant Ernest of Hanover; 
Humboldt, Savigny, Waagen, Raumer, Stahl, Bitter, Riickert the 
poet and orientalist; the Tiecks, the poet and sculptor; Rauch the 
sculptor; Schinkel the architect, — stand amongst a host of other 
brilliant names. Arts as well as arms are in the ascendant in 
Berlin. It possesses the most numerously attended university in 
Germany, so that it is difficult to say whether its military or 
literary character is the most prominent. On Tieck the poet the 
monarch has bestowed a pension, on condition that he spends three 
months in the year with him; and we had the pleasure of visiting 
this oldest veteran of German literature, — this man of many volumes 
of legend, romance, and novel, — in his pleasant house just below 
the palace of Sans Souci, given him for his use by the king. 

There are one or two peculiarities attributed to the North 
Germans, and particularly the people of Berlin, which should not 
be quite passed without notice. They are of mixed origin — 
Germans, Sclavonians, Poles, French, and Jews; and the South 
Germans will not allow them the name of true Germans, they say 
they are Prussians. They are also charged with a greater degree 
of stiffness and coldness of manner than the South Germans. We 
could observe nothing of the sort amongst the educated classes. 
In no part of Germany did we meet with more polite yet friendly 
people; nowhere did we receive more cordial kindness. The same 
thing, however, cannot be said of the burgher, shop, and working- 
people. Instead of that alacrity to serve you, that desire to please 
which such people generally shew, and which is their interest, in 
inns and shops we often found persons who seemed to think very 
ill of you for coming in to disturb them, and had much rather, 
apparently, that you did not trouble them with your demands for 
their articles. Waiters came carelessly, received your orders with 
indifference, and went away without a single word to assure you 
they would execute them. When you entered shops to purchase 
the most expensive articles, you most probably saw three or four 
persons in different parts of them, with not a single customer to 
occupy them; yet these people, instead of approaching to learn 
your wishes, must be called by you. With great coolness, and 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 4-il 

probably without a word, they would take down the articles, leave 
you to examine them, and retire to their old station. You had to 
call them repeatedly to ask this and the other. In some cases we 
have been obliged to open their glass-cases ourselves, and look out 
what we wanted; and in others, have gone away without purchasing, 
from utter inability to procure attendance where nothing was doing. 

It is often the same at inns and coffee-houses. To Charlotten- 
burg we drove to breakfast. Though we were four persons, besides 
having a coachman and horses, that required refreshment, the 
landlord looked out of the door very drowsily, and went in again. 
A dirty boy went to shew the coachman the stable; and another 
dirty boy, with a dirty cloth in his hand, set our coffee, after an 
awful delay, on a dirty table under the trees in the garden. It 
was with great difficulty that we could obtain eggs, clean plates, a 
steak, or anything else. It began to rain, and prodigious was the 
difficulty to get our breakfast conveyed into a portico. Landlord, 
landlady, servants, went lazily to and fro, and evidently thought us 
very troublesome people for wanting a breakfast. Yet this was at 
the best Restaurateur, near the palace. This is the odd disposition 
which so generally annoys strangers, but which seems to belong to 
this class rather than to the higher. 

The porters of Berlin are a peculiar race, celebrated all over 
Germany. They are called Eckensteher, or Corner-standers, from 
their habit of collecting in groups at public corners. They have a 
badge on the arm, and are readily known by their original humour. 
They bandy sharp words in their peculiar Berlin dialect with great 
effect. They are a most un-German sort of fellows — the Irish of 
Berlin. They have a deal of sly cunning and drollery; a dry 
manner; will have the last word; and are sure to turn the laugh 
against their antagonists, be they high or low, educated or unedu- 
cated. They carry a bottle of what they call Kiimmel, a strong 
aniseed cordial, of which they are pretty often sipping. They are 
always ragged, fond of drink, and ready with their repartee. Nante 
Strumpf, the Sam Weller of Berlin, has been made the representa- 
tive of this class; and his appearance before the police to lodge a 
complaint of injuries in a scuffle, has set every stage of Germany 
in a roar. Nante Strumpf's Posthumous Papers, chiefly satirical 
remarks on the manners, public buildings, etc. of Berlin, are still 
publishing in numbers, and really contain much wit. 



442 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

But there is another sort of papers, not quite so amusing, 
which must here be noticed. These are the enormous documents 
of which, on all occasions, the Germans are so fond; and which, 
amongst other inconveniences, render travelling in this country 
often ludicrously provoking. Before you can travel, in fact, in 
Germany comfortably, you must study three or four codes of laws; 
one for the steamer, one for the eilwagen, and one for the railway. 

In coming up the Rhine last summer, I had a chest of house- 
hold articles, which I was not permitted to take with me as luggage. 
Having made a declaration of its contents, the officers of the 
customs at Emmerich assured me it would be delivered duty free 
at Heidelberg. The carrier, however, to whom they consigned it 
at Mannheim, sent me a note of its arrival there, and a request to 
fetch it away. Unwittingly, I complied. I sent a young German, 
desiring him to pay all demands upon it; which he did, and brought 
it with him. With the box came a stupendous folio document of 
eight pages, which contained, amongst a vast mass of printed 
matter, a written-in list of the contents of the box, according to 
my declaration. Supposing this a mere form to certify what the 
chest was, I put it aside. Six months after comes this very carrier 
from Mannheim with a charge of two pounds sterling, in default of 
not delivering this paper to the custom-house at Heidelberg; and 
pointing out, amid scores of others, a clause to this effect. It was 
in vain to state that the chest was duty-free; that he himself should 
have delivered this box at the custom-house at Heidelberg; that as 
a foreigner, I was ignorant of the nature of this paper, and had 
requested, on receiving my box, to pay all demands, and had paid 
them. It was in vain that I applied at the custom-house; none of 
my positions were disputed; but I had unluckily fallen into the 
carrier's trap, and taken my box and this awful document. They 
shrugged their shoulders; said it was the law; that they did not 
make it — and I paid. 

At Vienna, on taking our places in the eilwagen for Prague, 
a long paper of twelve rules was put into my hands, one of which 
stated that only forty pounds luggage each person was allowed ; 
and another, that each package must be of leather. As our packages 
did not happen to be leather, they must be sent by the post-wagen 
at a high charge. These charges often cost an unlucky traveller 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY- 443 

as much as his fare, and therefore he should, in Germany, 
remember that there is nothing like leather. 

The formality as to time is equally great. On the railway from 
Vienna to Baden no tickets are given out within the quarter of an hour 
preceding the starting of the train. We presented ourselves at the 
office at Baden half an hour previous. It had begun to rain heavily, 
and crowds of disappointed pleasure-seekers stood at the window 
waiting for tickets. Only one man delivered them, and he, with 
most ominous coolness, every few minutes turned his eye on the 
office clock. At the moment that the finger reached the quarter 
he stopped, declared the time up, and refused to deliver another 
ticket. It was in vain that the indignant throng declared that 
they had already, many of them, been waiting half-an-hour : he 
only answered " that was the rule — he did not make it," and the 
poor people must wait not only the quarter till this train went, 
but another hour or two for the next. The quarter passed, and 
the train set out not half filled, leaving the wretched crowd in the 
rain ! Never was the beauty of German formality so beautifully 
carried out. 

But at Berlin came the climax. At the railway office, on accom- 
panying our luggage, a list of jive-and-twenty regulations was put 
into my hand, and which now lies before me. Several of these 
rules consisted of two or three great sentences, and none of the 
clearest. There was a good hour's work to explore the whole 
extent of this bill of pains and penalties, to see into what liabilities 
you run yourself, and in default of what formalities you could not 
go at all. If you were sickly, you could not travel home though it 
were to save your life; if you were not in your place in the carriage 
ten minutes before the starting time, or at the first ringing of the 
bell, you would be locked out. Then, if you had not a right ticket, 
or had an undated ticket, or had by accident changed your ticket 
with a fellow-traveller, or had not delivered your luggage at the 
luggage-office half an hour before starting time — all was full of 
penalties and losses — till we could not help exclaiming 

Alas ! what perils do environ 
The man who travels on the iron. 

And how was a foreigner ignorant of the language to avoid running 
his head against all these provisoes ? As soon as my packages 



444 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

were in the office, the clerk cast his eyes on them — "Only forty 
pounds weight is allowed ! " " These belong to three persons." 
" Good ! but here are more than 120 pounds." "Very well; 
throw out that box. It can go direct to Heidelberg by the Fracht- 
wagen" — the stage. "What is the weight of it?" It was 
weighed. " It cannot go by the stage. Nothing is allowed to go 
by the stage under 40 pounds weight ; it must go by the Fah- 
rende-post" — the packet-post, at a great price. " Well then, clap 
on that carpet-bag, I don't want it." A man was sent for canvass 
and string. The package was made heavy enough for the stage- 
wagon ; and I imagined we had come to plain sailing. The man 
put one trunk into the scales. "■ We are three ; weigh them all 
together." "No," said he, "that is against the regulations," and 
he laid his finger on the 12th rule of my list. "Every passenger 
is allowed to take forty pounds free luggage with him ; but if two 
persons pack their luggage in one case, and it exceeds forty pounds, 
it must pay just the same as if it belonged to one." All above 
40 pounds pays as 100 pounds ; that is, if you have 41 pounds, 
you pay for 60 pounds overweight — half a silver groschen per mile. 

" What ! " I exclaimed, " can so absurd a regulation possibly 
exist ? Cannot a man and wife, two sisters, two boys, two travel- 
lers of any kind, pack their clothes together but they must pay as 
for one if exceeding 40 pounds, and you allow 40 pounds for every 
individual? If two persons have only 41 pounds together ; though 
you allow 40 pounds to one, yet they must pay for 60 pounds 
overweight ! ! ! " The worthy clerk only said, " You see it there ; 
I did not make it." My trunks were weighed separately; and 
though altogether they did not now amount to 120 pounds for the 
three, I paid for 60 pounds on one, because it weighed 41 pounds, 
which was in fact only allowing each person twenty pounds. 

Germans who have been in England, and to whom I have 
related these things, have always strictly denied such things as 
existing, till I have produced the printed rules themselves; when 
they have taken at once new ground, and said justly, " But even 
this precision has its good as well as its annoying side; for it is 
carried through. Your luggage is made safe, and not only that 
but your lives." This is true. Throughout Germany, upon all 
the immense lines of its railways, scarcely such a thing as an 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 445 

accident is ever heard of, while those of France, and far more of 
England, make all Europe shudder. 

15. THE HARZ COUNTRY — CLIMBING THE BROCKEN. 

From this great northern point wheeling round, we shall now 
make a rapid retreat to the south; take a peep at the Harz country 
and at Weimar, and home. Steam whirled us again over the level 
plains to Magdeburg, that city of vast fortifications and many 
sieges; where Tilly in the Thirty Years' War glorified himself in 
one of the bloodiest massacres in history, and in his account of it 
to the Austrian court, said he thought there had been no such 
destruction since that of Troy or Jerusalem, and only wished that 
the Princesses had been present to witness the vengeance taken by 
his soldiers on the people ; which he thought very fine. In fact, 
these were some of the most shameful and disgusting brutalities 
committer on helpless women and children, and were of all things 
the last to entertain any ladies but those of such a court as that of 
Ferdinand II. The description of this monster Tilly is itself a 
horror. He is believed on principle, like Alva, to have studied to 
render his appearance as terrible as possible. Here he sate on 
his great horse, a lean figure, in a short slashed jacket of green 
satin; on his high-pointed hat, a still higher red feather; great 
yellow eyes under wrinkled brows, under his sharp-pointed nose 
a bristly staring moustache ; spectral, hollow cheeked, with a cer- 
tain insane expression, which however, with his vanity, seemed 
only to be assumed. There he sate, watching with delight the 
ravaging and burning of the city by 40,000 soldiers. The church 
of St. John, filled with women, was nailed up and burnt. The 
whole city to 137 poor houses was burnt down before he would 
listen to entreaties to stop the carnage ; 30,000 murdered people 
lay about or were devoured by the flames. For two days went on 
this horrible scene, till Magdeburg was a wilderness; and the 
wives and daughters of the murdered citizens, tied to the horses' 
girths of the troopers, were dragged after them to the camp. Tilly's 
flourishes about Troy and Jerusalem were, no doubt, suggested to 
him by the unbounded flatteries of the address made to him by 
the Canon Bake, an old school-fellow of his, in order to induce 
him to spare the cathedral, with its contents of 4000 people, who 



446 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

had fled into it. " Venit surnma dies, et ineluctabile fatum Magd- 
burgo. Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, et ingens gloria Parthenopes." 
He laid on his adulation thick, and succeeded. Never was flattery 
better employed. We saw with pleasure in the cathedral the fine 
monument of this clever fellow, who knew so well how to employ 
his rhetoric so as to save his fellow creatures, and that which now 
is his real monument, the noble cathedral itself, one of the finest 
in Germany, full of exquisite architecture, exquisite carvings, and 
monuments, amongst which the large bronze altar-tomb of Arch- 
bishop Ernest, with the figures of the Twelve Apostles, by the 
famous Peter Vischer of Nuremberg, were alone a treasure to any 
city. 

We wandered also through the extensive and ruinous cloisters 
of the adjoining monastic buildings, and saw the boys pouring out 
of the very old school where no doubt Luther was a poor scholar, 
singing with the city choristers from door to door to enable him 
to remain there. 

From Magdeburg, another level stage, amid manufactories of 
beet-root sugar, and odours of sugar-boiling and chickory-roasting, 
and sights of peasants bringing in cart-loads of the beet-roots, and 
stupendous heaps of these roots lying in the factory yards, brought 
us to the little old and quiet town of Halberstadt. Two immense 
churches, one falling to decay and one still in good condition, but 
both very old and very fine; a little town, with solitary grass-grown 
streets, and great spreading lime-trees in them, reminded us much 
of some of our own little cathedral towns, which bear now only 
the dreamy aspect of their former consequence. But Halberstadt 
has always been a town of literary taste, and was interesting to us 
from the recollection of the days when old Father Gleim, as the 
younger literati delighted to call him, lived here, and made it a 
point of attraction to all poetically inclined. When he made him- 
self the apostle of literature and friendship, and Halberstadt the 
little Athens of Germany, encouraging all, and helping all the young 
with pen, with counsel, and with purse. Burger, Bamler, Heinse, 
Michaelis, Jean Paul, Jacobi, and others destined to win high 
honours, delighted to visit him and correspond with him, and had 
to thank him, as thousands besides, for the most essential services; 
and the good-hearted old man, in the simple kindness of his nature, 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 447 

was charmed with everybody and everybody with him. But Hal- 
berstadt is still literary; and in our inn, the Hotel von Preussen, 
a most excellent one, kept by a friendly old military officer, we 
actually found a young man entertaining a large body of the inhabit- 
ants with reading Shakspeare's et Merchant of Venice/' in Tieck and 
Scklegel's translation. The people seemed delighted with the play, 
though the young man's pronunciation of the Hamburgh dialect, 
with its ze, za, zo's, would have set Shakspeare's teeth on edge; 
a dialect, by the way, however, which many of our country people 
are taught in England, by traders from Hamburgh, under the 
pretence of its being Hanoverian, and therefore the purest , while 
it is just the same as if some waggish Englishman should teach 
Somersetshire dialect for English. 

But the Brocken now shewed its bulk in the distance, and 
called us forward. We plunged at once into the plain on the way 
towards it. I say plunged, for it was literally so. We had now 
arrived at what I had supposed had long ceased to exist where any 
tolerable degree of civilization prevailed, much more where Shak- 
speare was read — a country without roads; but we had to learn 
in the following week, that there was still abundance of such 
country in this part of Germany. From Halberstadt to Wernige- 
rode at the foot of the Harz, we waded and plunged along over 
the fat and deep ploughed fields in the most extraordinary manner. 
Ruts which swallowed the carriage to the axle, piles of mud which 
stood ground up by the action of the wheels like walls, reared 
themselves on either hand. We ploughed our way through dreary 
sloughs of sucking mud, through pools of muddy water, jolted 
over hollows, and swung on this side and on that, in the perilous 
necessity ever and anon occurring of passing out of one horrible track 
into another, to let wading wagons pass us. The ladies were no little 
alarmed; but I bade them look at the driver, who sate on his box 
as steady as the figure on a ship's prow, and take comfort — it was 
only what he was used to, had lived through often, and would live 
through again. After a dismal struggle of several hours, how 
merrily rolled the wheels once more up the glen of the Use, past 
the lofty castle of Count Stollberg-Wernigerode, and set us down 
at the capital hotel of the Forelle. 

It was now rapidly advancing into October, and everybody had 



448 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

declared that it was too late to think of an ascent of the Broeken; 
but that which may not be seen another time, had better be seen 
late than not at all. It was already past noon as we sat in the 
Forelle, and good coffee and a pleasant chatty host within, and rain 
and threatening clouds without, were very seductive. But spite 
of this we resolved to set out for the Blocksberg if the guide should 
sav it was safe. The best time to see the scenerv of the Broeken is 
not in calm and sunshine, but in gloom and tempest. The guide 
gave a favourable answer, and we mounted our mules. We were 
four in number, as a young friend had joined us at Leipsic for 
this trip through the Harz, and wrapped in grotesque but effective 
style, with clouds rolling menacingly above us, and winds howling 
through the woods around, we cantered, with much laughter at our 
mutual appearance, up the valley of the Use. 

Our ascent was about twelve English miles; but till we reached 
the Upper Broeken, a comparatively small part of the way, it was 
by no means steep. It was through a region of hanging pine 
wood. The lofty trees, which had been swept and tossed by many 
a fierce wind, hung from their rocks and steeps over our hollow 
way with fine effect. The Use, a mountain torrent clear as crystal, 
dashed over the rocks on our left, in foam and thunder. Huge 
masses of crag, covered with greenest moss, lay tumbled one over 
another in the steep woods, right and left; the winds sweeping 
through the ravines and the trees, with occasional breaks in the 
clouds, and flying snatches of sunshine, made the way as wild as 
any one could desire. Our guide, a little stout good-natured 
fellow, ran on by the mules, pointing out all spots of traditionary 
interest, and relating the traditions themselves. 

As we ascended higher, the scene became more solemn. Char- 
coal fires sent their smoke and very peculiar odour through the 
forest; the solitude became more deep, — one wide savage region of 
hills and^'glens all black with great pine woods. The whole of the 
gloomy shade beneath the trees was one chaotic scene of masses of 
crag flung over each other, overgrown with the moss of ages, and 
beneath them roared descending torrents, of which, however, no 
glimpse could be seen. The guide told us that here the Use took 
its subterraneous course, till it appeared below where we had seen 
it, while another stream took its way down the other side of the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 449 

hills towards Schiercke. The mysterious roaring and struggling 
of these unseen torrents were strongly impressive. 

Anon the bleak heights of the Blocksber£ bewail to shew them- 
selves on our right, and soon after we issued forth from the woods 
and began to ascend the narrow and rugged mountain track up the 
open and much steeper ascent. If any one wanted to have all the 
wildness of the Brocken, it was here. Night was rapidly descend- 
ing, and the blackest clouds were crowding up the wind to descend 
with it. The wind was fierce and howling, driving a thick mist 
along, through which the bare hills, the thickets, the wilderness of 
huge crags which lay scattered all around us, shewed dreary and 
mysterious. The guide warned us that it was necessary to make 
haste; for the storm would probably become tremendous, and the 
darkness so intense, that we should have difficulty to find the 
house, even if we were able to keep our seats on the mules. The 
momentary changes which take place on these mountains, from 
sunshine to fiercest storm, from perfect stillness to a furious hurri- 
cane which stops your breath, dashes you on the ground, and rends 
the very clothes from your backs, are notorious. This is by no 
means to be wondered at when the height at which this Upper 
Brocken lies above all surrounding hills is considered, and over 
what hundreds of miles, and in some directions to the very sea, 
the winds come careering without a single obstacle. 

The very intelligent and gentlemanly Wirth, who has lived on 
the summit of the Brocken since 1834, the year round, not only 
relates many extraordinary instances of these sudden changes, but 
has recorded some of them in a little volume — " Der Brocken und 
seine Merkwiirdigkeiten." He tells you that it is owing to these 
sudden and tremendous hurricanes that the Brocken-house has 
been so repeatedly burnt down. That such is the force of the 
winds in winter, that they actually drive great pieces of ice along ; 
shoot them like arrows up to the highest points, cutting off every 
yieldable thing in their way, and drive the snows positively through 
the clothing of people exposed to them to the skin. Heavy beams 
of timber have been hoisted by them from the ground, hurled along 
like battering-rams, and snapped to pieces like rotten sticks. He 
relates that his wife and a maid in May 1835 set out in very fine 
weather to go down on business to Wernigerode. In less than ten 

G G 



450 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

minutes a horrible storm, with drifting of snow, came on. Seeing 
that it was impossible for them to return without help to the house, 
as the wind would be in their very teeth as they attempted again 
to reclimb the hill, he rushed forth in great alarm, and found them 
dashed upon the ice which covered the descent, at some distance 
from each other. The wife had her cloak and bonnet rent clear 
away, and was bleeding from various wounds. She was in a faint- 
ing state, and both were half stiff with cold. With desperate 
exertion he bore her to the house, and returned for the maid, 
whom he found stiff and senseless. Both were happily restored; 
but had they advanced further on their way, nothing could have 
saved them. 

With such stories as these in our ears, we endeavoured to push 
on; but the way was not only rough and dark, but our mules were 
now nearly exhausted. The storm at every moment increased. 
Rain and hail drove with such fury that it seemed actually to cut 
where it struck. We found it impossible to speak if we opened 
our mouths, and trusted to the guide to see that all were in com- 
pany, and on their beasts. Thus closely muffled up, and fiercely 
struggling with the wind, we moved on. If ever the elements 
seemed alive with the agency of darkness and witchcraft, it was 
then. The storm hissed amongst the heath and the crags, and 
growled round us like a continued thunder. As we passed the 
Witches' Dance-place and the Witches' Wash-basin, the rage of the 
elements seemed as if it would carry us all away; but presently we 
found ourselves at the foot of the wooden tower which stands by 
the Brocken-house, and we gave a shout of exultation. 

There was something most wild and dreary in the scene. The 
tower, the buildings of the little inn, all were exaggerated and made 
mysterious in the gloom and fog; and the savage character of the 
scene and the night were in full accordance with our ideas of the 
Brocken. But the prospect of shelter and a fire were more attrac- 
tive than external sublimity. We trotted up to the house with 
loud hollas; the great dog barked; lights appeared; and the host 
stood in astonishment as he saw us enter. "What!" said he, 
tc the top of the Brocken to-night, and ladies too \" In a few 
minutes we had cast off our outer garments, found all under dry, 
and seated ourselves near the glowing stove with lights and coffee. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 



451 



Here we sat and conversed with our intelligent host, the Hen? 
Nehse; and as we heard his stories, and at the same time the 
tempests roaring round the house, and called to mind that we were 
on the wildest and highest habitable spot in Germany, we confessed 




that the Brocken had not acquired its name for nothing. It was, 
no doubt, this superlatively savage character which, thousands of 
years ago, made the wild natives pitch upon it as the altar-place of 
their gods, and add there horrors of a cruel superstition to the fury 
of the elements, which have thus crowned the mountain with its 
dark and indelible fame. The blood which, for ages, flowed on its 
craggy and bleak heights, and the thrilling cries of human victims, 
and the horns and drums of the ruthless priests, have sunk 
into the heart of the people with a force that neither time nor 
education has been able to eradicate. They believe as firmly that 
all the evil spirits of the world assemble here on Walpurgis night, 
the eve of May-day, as they believe in Christianity. This was, no 
doubt, a great anniversary here in Pagan times; and the great altar 
of Crodo, their god, has been converted into the DeviFs-pulpit by 



GG 



:9, 



452 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

the zeal of the first Christian missionaries; and the place where 
the Pagan dances were celebrated, and the hollow stone where the 
the priests washed away the gore of the sacrifice, have assumed the 
equally characteristic names of the Witches' Dance-place and the 
Witches' Wash-basin. The late period to which Paganism still 
clung to these mountains, accounts too, in part, for the strength 
with which these superstitions linger here. When Charlemagne 
determined to convert or extirpate the Saxons, and carried fire 
and slaughter through their country, for two-and-thirty years, with 
a sanguinary fury which, more than any other circumstance, has 
spotted his great name; nowhere did he find a more inveterate 
resistance than in these hills. The spirit of the brave Wittekind 
did not animate the rude Saxons more desperately against him in 
the woods of Westphalia, than the priests of Crodo did here. His 
soldiers, whenever made prisoners, and even his sentinels, were 
carried off, and sacrificed with great fires and shouting on the 
Brock en. 

The usual accounts of the Brocken and its appearances by 
tourists, are not the most correct. The DeviPs-pulpit, as fre- 
quently asserted, is not at all destroyed. The walls of the inn, 
which are described as five feet thick, are just half that thickness. 
It was a former house, whose walls were partly composed of moss 
and turf, mixed with stone, and cased with wood, which were of 
that bulk. The Brocken Gespenst, or Spectre, does not confine 
its appearance, as reputed, to autumn, nor is it so very rare. It 
is also seen equally at sunrise or at sunset. In 1838, it appeared 
nine times; in 1839, seven. It appears in all months of the year; 
and in the last-mentioned season was seen in February, March, 
April, July, August, November, and December. 

These singular appearances occur when at sunset, or sunrise, 
on the opposite side of the Brocken a dense wall of mist rises 
from the valley, and yet leaves the top of the Brocken clear. The 
shadow of the Brocken is then thrown on the wall of fog, and 
every thing and person abroad is shewn in a gigantic form, which is 
increased or decreased as the fog is driven farther off or approaches 
nearer. If the fog is dry, you see not only yourself, but your 
neighbour; if very damp, only yourself, surrounded by a rainbow- 
coloured glory, which becomes more lustrous and beautiful the 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 453 

damper and thicker the fog is, and the nearer it approaches. On 
a raw fog, in winter, the appearance assumes another form. It 
assumes then not a circular glory, but three clusters of radiations 
proceed from the head; one from each temple, and one upright. 
These are of deep yellow — clear, luminous, and sharply denned. 
This glory is the most splendid in the coldest weather; and when 
the particles of mist are frozen in the air, the radiations appear 
studded with diamonds, so intensely brilliant that the eye cannot 
long bear them. 

The storm did not abate its rigour, yet the Wirth did not despair 
of a fine morning for us. We turned over the albums kept here, 
and enjoyed a hearty laughter at the most absurd inscriptions, by 
men of various nations; none of which, however, were outdone in 
extravagance by some of our own; one of whom signed himself 
Bloody Dick; another recorded that he had jumped Jim Crow on 
the Brocken; and a third, that he had seen German witches fly 
about it on German sausages! The Wirth is a very superior man. 
He enjoys his solitary world here above all things, though he com- 
plains of the insolent and quarrelsome conduct of many of his 
guests in summer time. In winter he lives here with his wife, his 
younger children, and one maid, often blocked up fast in his house 
for_weeks by snow; but he has a good collection of books, and 
amuses himself with reading and poetry, of which one piece, written 
by him in the album, descriptive of his feelings and the changes 
of nature in its annual round, would do honour to any man. As 
a specimen of his good sense and moderation, I shall rather give 
a few lines, also there found, in reply to some not very courteous 
ones, under the form of a parody on the Student's song, " The 
Pope/' in which the writer boasts of riding in his carriage, while 
the Brocken Wirth must go on foot, bow, play the agreeable, and 
be quizzed for his pains : 

I thank thee God ' 

That in my spirit glad and clear, 

I live well pleased, the Landlord here. 

Here right content, 1 sit and smile 

At the world's treachery and guile. 

I live still for myself alone, 

As Landlord of the Brocken known. 

God, for His strength, I daily bless; 

For feet that know no weariness. 



454 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Gladly I run, be't far or near, 

To wait on strangers, come they here ; 

Bring strife and riot to an end, 

And act the Landlord and the Friend. 

Though guiltless, if offence I find, 

My conscience leaves me peace of mind. 

Though senseless wrath, ungenerous scorn, 

And haughty insults must be borne; 

Yet, shew the man whose frown I fear, — 

Here I am Host, and will be here ! 

But they are our worthy Wirth's prose narrations which shew 
what arduous duties are connected with his post here, and what 
activity, humanity and discretion, are necessary in the landlord of 
the Brocken. The first is a specimen of an ascent in the winter. 

Bormann, the well-known guide from Harzburg, arrived at the 
Brocken-house at nine o' clock at night on the 29th of December 
1838, and announced that he had been engaged to conduct a 
gentleman up who had become quite exhausted beyond the lesser 
Brocken, and had sunk buried in the snow at the spot called 
Herrnkothe, and if not speedily succoured must be totally lost. 

" Provided with wine and refreshments I set forth immediately, 
accompanied by my great dog,* and the guide Bormann. We 
found the gentleman still lying in the snow in the same spot, 
disabled in all his limbs by frost, and trembling excessively. We 
obliged him to drink some wine, and eat something. We then got 
him on his legs, but he had no power to go. We harnessed the 
dog before to draw him, and ourselves pushed behind; but he was 
too much exhausted to be able to go more than eight or ten steps 
at a time, and soon declared again that he could go no further; 
and the guide Bormann was himself too much fatigued to be able 
to carry him. I took hirn on my back, and bore him as far as my 
strength would allow; but the way was too long, and too heavy with 
the loose snow, to make much progress. The only chance which 
now remained was to get a hand-sledge from the house, for which 
I ran off, and on this we succeeded by about one o'clock in the 
morning in bringing him to the Brocken-house; where, after his 
feet and hands had been well rubbed with snow to take the frost 

* This fine fellow is of the true St. Bernard breed, and has a singular look, with 
his double nose, or rather with the centre of his nose, the gristle between the two 
nostrils wanting, as you see now and then amongst these large dogs in Germany. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 455 

out of them, he was put to bed, and the next day was able to pursue 
his journey to Gottingen without inconvenience. It was a peculiar 
mercy of God that it occurred on a still, though cold night, or his 
recovery would have been impossible." 

In the summer, however, accidents are not uncommon. " At 
one o' clock in the night of the 7th of August 1837, a man came 
here from Braunlage, in the midst of a tremendous storm with 
thunder, quite exhausted. He said he had set out to conduct two 
gentlemen and two ladies. The storm coming on with excessive 
darkness and thick fog near the Kbnigsberg, he had himself lost 
his way. He appeared to have descended more and more to the 
left, and therefore deeper and deeper into a morass. The company 
had, on this account become extremely enraged with him, and 
threatened to beat him, and on this he had fled, at once, to escape 
their fury, and if possible, to procure light and help from the 
Brocken-house. With the utmost peril and labour he had now 
made his way through thickets, up steeps, and over rocks, ever 
ascending, and by the greatest good fortune arriving at the house, 
begged most urgently for immediate assistance, or the party in 
this terrible weather and in the morass must perish. 

" As speedily as possible I supplied myself with wine and 
bread-and-butter, with lanterns and fire apparatus, and accom- 
panied by my great dog and the guide, set out to the place where 
the man supposed he had left the strangers; but there, alas! we 
found not the slightest trace of them. The guide, in fact, was so 
confused by the terrible darkness and his anxiety, that he really 
knew not where he had left them. With the hound I traversed 
in various directions that very wet and boggy moorland between 
the black pine wood and the Ekersprunge, and after many vain 
crossings and quests, we found, in a tolerably deep and boggy 
draining channel, the recent traces of people, and soon after the 
people themselves, who had become aware of the barking of the dog. 

"After the most welcome refreshment of wine and bread and 
butter, we began the really arduous return towards the right track. 
Wind and rain, snow and hail mixed, raged horribly, and the cold 
was beside intense. The ladies especially found it difficult to 
mount, as they had lost their shoes in the morass, and in want 
of better were obliged to put on some of their stuff ones, which 



456 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

they had brought with them. For the greater part of the way the 
ladies were obliged to be carried. With excessive exertion and 
fatigue, at length, however, the Brocken-house was reached. The 
guests were provided with dry linen and clothes, with warm foot- 
baths, and after tea they retired to rest in the warmed chambers, 
and next day about noon, their linen being in the meantime washed 
and prepared, and their clothes cleaned from their plastering of 
clay and bog-earth, they were rejoiced with the sight of sunshine 
and a clear prospect, and left the Erocken quite merry and satis- 
fied with their visit." 

The Wirth now turned to more tragical events; and first 
mysteriously and reluctantly alluded to the fate of two young 
people who, as it appeared, in the course of an elopement made 
a short visit to the Brocken, and there, in a fit of despair at the 
consequences of their rash act, resolved to destroy each other, and 
carried their plan into effect near the Glasshiitte, JacobVinoor. 
Escaping from this subject, which seemed to be connected in his 
mind with particular horrors, he proceeded to describe what stands 
nearly in these words in his own account of the Brocken. 

" On the 10th of January 1837, 1 went to Schiercke on matters 
of business. One of the maids, Karoline Heyder, begged that she 
might go with me, in order to get measured for articles of clothing 
which she wanted making. Though I was reluctant, yet I granted 
her request, because neither the ways nor the weather were bad. 
We set off after eight o'clock in the morning, and reached Schiercke 
about ten o' clock. At two o'clock, our respective concerns being 
completed, we set out back again. At a quarter past four we 
reached the upper Brocken. Here came the other maid Karoline 
Kuhlemann, to meet her fellow-servant, and to help her to carry 
the basket with two loaves of bread which she had brought with 
her. As Karoline Heyder was weary, and as the two girls pro- 
bably wished to chat over together the news the one had picked 
up in Schiercke, they begged me to go on without them. As the 
Brocken-house was now only a few hundred yards distant, and as 
they were together, I went on before, but not without warning them 
not to be long, as the weather began to look somewhat threatening. 

"Scarcely had I arrived in the Brocken-house, when I became 
uneasy at their stay, and went back again. But how great was 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 45T 

my horror to find neither of them on the place or the road, and 
to receive no answer to my repeated calls, while there set in at this 
moment a furious tempest of wind and driving snow, which 
prevented any possibility of my getting a sight of them. I ran 
here and there, and shouted repeatedly, but in vain. I then ran 
back to the house, in the hope that they might have arrived by 
another direction; but I found only my wife, who wrung her hands 
in an agony bordering on despair, and in whose cries of consterna- 
tion the children joined. Leaving them again in their distress and 
in their fears for my own life, I hurried forth, having my two 
hounds in a leash, and provided with my double-barreled gun. 
I traversed the surface of the Brocken in all directions, shouting 
and discharging at intervals the gun. It was all in vain ! The 
weather growing every moment more terrible; the snow driving 
continually thicker and thicker, till it scarcely permitted me to 
breathe or keep open my eyes; the darkness growing deeper and 
deeper, and the cold having fallen to 19° of Reaumur, compelled 
me at length to seek the house, which, by help of the dogs which 
I had in the leash, I found, though not till nearly stiffened with 
the frost, and scarcely in my senses. 

"After a little rest, my anguish drove me forth again to ever 
fresh and ever equally fruitless researches. So went through that 
whole, long, indescribably horrible night. The next day too was 
spent in attempts as little successful, which through the continuance 
of the tempestuous weather and the drifting of the snow, every 
hour was made more difficult. At length, some four hundred yards 
on the north side of the Brocken-house, the basket with the two 
loaves of bread was discovered, and this led us to push with greater 
assiduity our search in that direction, which proved, nevertheless, 
to be the wrong one. It was not till the second morning that the 
bodies themselves were found near the Fahrwegs Wiese (the High- 
way Field), by the Schiercke road. They lay some twenty paces 
from each other, and were covered with ice and snow. 

"With the help of people fetched from Schiercke, they were got 
down on two sledges, and every means to restore life used, but in 
vain. They were buried in Schiercke. Great was the loss of those 
two honest and industrious girls; terrible the situation of my wife 
and myself in our comfortless solitude; and though the time which 



458 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

has since elapsed and the solace of religion have abated our bitter 
grief and regret on this subject, yet our hearts bleed anew whenever 
we think on that day of misery." 

In the picturesque and romantic Reisebilder of Bluuienhagen, 
this serious accident is related in another manner; and moreover 
it is therein said that the father of one of these unfortunate maidens 
is a veteran with a wooden leg, who has a good pension for the loss 
of his limb in battle, and that the loss of this, his only daughter, 
occasioned him from the feeling of his grief to resort to the Brocken, 
and take up his abode in the niche of the tower. This is an error. 
Neither of the fathers of these damsels has been a soldier, nor has 
lost a limb, nor therefore has any pension. One is a shoemaker at 
Wernigerode, and the other a carpenter in Elbingerode, both with 
families. Neither of them has ever ascended the Brocken. 

A relation of our Wirth's, of a different kind, which appeared to 
us aimed at some of our own countrymen, though it was not 
distinctly declared, may serve to divert our thoughts from these 
sorrowful passages, and amuse our readers as it did us. 

" Two gentlemen, from countries beyond sea, one of them 
with a very large volume of Travels in Germany, in a foreign 
language, under his arm, inquired on entering the Brocken-house 
for the Witches' Wash-basin, whither they were immediately con- 
ducted. Arrived at it, they tasted the water, which had collected 
from several days' rain and fog in this scooped-out stone, and 
pronounced it insipid. Whereupon they returned again to the 
house and were shewn to their room. Soon after, one of them, 
provided with a mug and napkin, returned to the Witches' Wash- 
basin, scooped out the water, and wiped the hollow quite dry with 
the cloth, and this business being satisfactorily finished, returned 
to his room. One of the maids having observed this proceeding, 
as she was on the way to Gerlachsbrunnen, to fetch water for the 
use of the house, as she returned thought there would be no harm 
in pouring a little water again out of her bucket into the Witches' 
Wash-basin, as she saw neither of the gentlemen near. After the 
gentleman had had some coffee and eggs, he set out again to the 
Witches' Wash-basin, and saw to his delight that the water during 
his absence, in the brightest atmosphere and sunshine, had again 
collected; fetched again a mug, drank some of the water, and 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 459 

pronounced it superlatively excellent; once more scooped it out, and 
posted himself with his watch in his hand, in order precisely to 
determine in what time the Witches' Wash-basin would again fill 
itself. 

"Some of the guests being apprised of the proceedings and 
evident ideas of this gentleman, they immediately with one voice 
declared that he must by some means be removed from the stone, 
and it once again filled with water. To accomplish this, one of the 
gentlemen rushed out of the house with loud cries, and ran towards 
the Wolken-H'auschen, exactly in the opposite direction, and the 
other gentlemen went hastily after him. The philosopher at the 
Witches' Wash-basin, seeing this, and imagining something very 
remarkable was to be seen, left the observation of the basin, and 
ran too. Great, however, was his mortification, when the other 
guests only received him with loud laughter, and assured him that 
they were merely in good spirits, and had a mind to make some 
observations on the Wolken-Hauschen. In the mean time the 
same maid had again filled the Witches' Wash-basin. The philo- 
sopher casting glances of scorn on the other parties, returned to 
the basin; but his wrath was converted into delight, as he observed 
that exactly in ten minutes and forty seconds the water had re- 
collected itself. He now ordered a table and chair, paper, pen and 
ink to be brought, in order to note down the particulars of this 
great natural phenomenon, and after finishing his article, protested 
that his book of travels had on this point declared the truth. 
Therefore he asserted that this was the greatest curiosity which he 
had seen in his travels in Germany, and that it alone was sufficient 
inducement to an ascent of the Brocken. He lamented only that 
this remarkable stone should receive so little attention ; it ought to 
have a little house built over it, and the water only be appropriated 
to curative purposes. 

" The philosopher was left in possession of his faith, the con- 
sequences of which have been that many of his countrymen 
have eagerly inquired for the Witches' Wash-basin, and admired 
it as a wonderful rarity. One disadvantage, however, has resulted 
from this — since in dry weather it is necessary to be at the trouble, 
occasionally, of filling the Witches' Water-basin, as the girl filled 
it before." 



460 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

The Wirth had orders to see that we were called very early in 
the morning, if there were the least chance of seeing the Brocken- 
Gespenst, or even of the sunrise ; but when we awoke, the storm 
was still raging round the house as furiously as ever. As I opened 
the window, and then the outer shutter, to have a look at the 
morning, the wind burst in with such a force as nearly to dash me 
down, and the window was not closed again without great difficulty. 
Never was a scene more dreary. All was one dense mass of grey 
fog, while the hissing and howling of the winds had a most cheer- 
less and hopeless sound. Not even the cheerful face of the Wirth, 
as he brought us in a dish of roasted Kramets-vogel (field-fares) 
to breakfast; nor the equally cheerful faces of his boys, who were 
busy in the hall making new snares to catch fresh Kramets-vogel 
in the woods, could induce us to believe that we should get a 
peep at anything from the top of the Brocken. These boys were 
making their traps of twigs of willow tied into rings about eight 
inches in diameter. On each they tied bunches of scarlet berries 
of the mountain ash, and amongst them snares of string, so that 
when the birds, which are very fond of these berries, come to peck 
them, they are caught in the snares. These hoops the boys hang 
on the low boughs of the pines in the woods, and take abundance 
of Kramets-vogel. They were confident that they should be able 
in an hour or two to be off to the woods with the snares ; and in 
truth, just as we were about to retreat from the Brocken in despair, 
away flew the mist, and one of the most amazing scenes opened like 
magic before us. It was the vast extent of country around us, 
including a circle of nearly 500 English miles. Around and below 
us were mountains from which the clouds were rolling like the 
smoke of large cities on fire, and leaving all their dark ridges, and 
rocks, and forests clear, and solemn and startling in their sud- 
denness. Glens full of black pine, green valleys running down 
here and there, with flashing waters and clustered cottages gleaming- 
white in the distance. And beyond, far around as the eye could 
reach, lay spread the immeasurable plains, with their smoking cities 
and towns and villages, rivers winding and glowing bright like 
trails of silver, and here and there grey ridges of distant mountains, 
with naked rocks and castles abruptly hoisted into the sky. 

Such is the scene around the Brocken ! How is it that people 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 461 

ascend it and see nothing ? Truly they may ascend many a loftier 
and sublimer mountain, but nowhere can they behold so immense 
and airy a landscape. It is not the regions of the Alps and Apen- 
nines that afford such, for these are giants that with their very 
eminence shut them out. It is only a peak like this of the Blocks- 
berg, which rears itself above all in its neighbourhood, and where 
no others of equal height lift themselves for scores of miles within 
their circuit, that can style itself truly an " earth o'ergazing moun- 
tain." Much, however, depends on the weather. If a person 
ascend in still summer weather, which is generally hazy, he sees 
no great prospect, and the Brocken itself appears almost common- 
place, especially if he ascends by the comparatively tame route from 
the Harzburg. I must therefore regard ourselves as peculiarly 
fortunate on our ascent. We had all the impressive accessories 
of storm and gloom, and then as sudden a clearance, throwing the 
world below with startling effect on the eye. 

What the expanse of prospect here is may be imagined when 
we say that it includes, as observed, a circle of nearly 500 English 
miles ; inhabited by from five to six millions of souls. A part 
of Prussia, Hanover, Saxony, Hesse, Weimar, Brunswick, Gotha, 
and most of the little princedoms of Anhalt-Dessau, Kbthen, and 
Bernburg, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and Budolstadt, Lippe- 
Detmold, Schaumburg, and Waldeck, etc. The cities of Halber- 
stadt, Magdeburg, Brandenburg, Wittenberg, Halle, Leipzic, Got- 
tingen, Hanover, Brunswick, Wolfenbuttel, and very many others, 
with the castle in Gotha, the cathedral in Erfurt, the whole chain 
of the Thiiringean forest hills, and, in fact, castles on the heights 
in almost every direction, and to the vastest distances, including 89 
cities and towns, 668 villages, fortresses, and hamlets, from a height 
above the level of the sea of 3633 feet. 

16. THE HARZ COUNTRY. — WEIMAR AND JENA. 

We descended the Brocken on foot, and pursued our way to 
Elbingerode, through Schiercke and Elend, the Valley of Fear and 
Misery — and by the way which Faust and Mephistophiles are 
supposed to ascend the Brocken. This scenery may have been 
formerly, or may now, to the imagination, in night and tempest, 
be invested with supernatural wildness and horrors; but to us, in 



462 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

sunshine, nothing could be more agreeable; and seldom have we 
traversed a valley, or passed through villages, with less appearance of 
wretchedness about them. The rocks, with various terrific names, 
the Snarchers, or Snorters, on the hills on our right; the Feuer- 
stein, or Firestone, aloft in the pine wood on our left, looked 
picturesque, and nothing more. The whole scenery had a very 
peculiar, but to us attractive aspect. Sweet green valleys, with 
rapid clear streams hurrying down them, with wild woods and 
hills around, amid which the charcoal - burners pursued their 
solitary business; cottages amid their old orchards; children 
watching their goats; and mills, and forges, worked by the moun- 
tain streams, gave everywhere a primitive but living character to 
the country. As we advanced farther through the Harz district, 
we found it like so much of the north of Germany, bare and 
ploughed. Yet, amid its common -place and half-savage scenery, 
the wildest rocks rising, and the most romantic valleys running; 
as the Bodethal and the Selkenthal; and everywhere mines, forges, 
smelting furnaces, shewed us that we were in a country of metallic 
wealth, of smutty industry, of cobolds and superstition. 

Blankenburg, belonging to the Duke of Brunswick, took won- 
derfully our fancy. It is like one of the pictures in Tonson's 
edition of Spenser's "Faery Queen." The castle of the Duke 
stands perched aloft on its rock, with its round towers, extinguisher- 
shaped spires, and antiquated battlements and gables; and as you 
looked from the windows you imagined yourself in a place described 
by Froissart, and expected every minute to see some gay troop of 
knights, with glittering hauberks and fluttering pennons, ascend- 
ing to the gates. The garden lay below in various terraces, with 
summer-houses and beautifully scattered trees. Deep at their feet 
lay the little grey, clustered town; and opposite to the windows, 
at some distance, ran a high ridge of a hill, out of which stood 
upright a jagged wall of rocks, very aptly called the Teufers Mauer, 
or Devil's Wall. Behind hung slopes of fine trees, descending 
into an immense park; right and left stretched vast, solitary, 
flanking woods, the haunt of the red-deer and the boar; and out 
in front expanded itself one of those great bare plains, with naked 
white villages, and others of those savage eminences of naked rocks, 
the most peculiar features of the country. In the castle we were 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 463 

shewn the portrait of the White Lady, who haunts this and many 
other castles in Germany, — and truly there was something myste- 
rious in her look; and beneath the Teufel's Mauer our postillion 
pointed out, as we passed, the entrance to the cave where the 
Vehme-Gericht used to hold its sittings. In truth the whole neigh- 
bourhood had an air of past wildness, now sufficiently softened 
down to be peculiarly piquant to the imagination. 

The Rosstrappe is a wild heap of gigantic granite hills and vast 
woods, to which we were again driven over a ploughed country 
without roads, through crag-strewn rivers, and along the most 
hanging slopes. Here the Bode rushes, resounding between pre- 
cipices of five hundred feet high. The name Rosstrappe, or Horse's 
Foot-print, is derived from the legend of a Princess Brunhilde, who 
being pursued by a giant, leaped across a ravine from one moun- 
tain top to another, at least a furlong asunder, on her horse, whose 
feet luckily had been just before blessed by a friendly bishop. The 
princess lost her crown during the leap, which fell into the depths 
of the Bode, where it yet lies. The giant, in attempting to leap 
after Brunhilde, also fell in here, where he remains in the form of 
a black dog, guarding the crown. The bishop now stands aloft on 
the summit of some inaccessible rocks, as if turned to stone at the 
sight of these amazing events ; and a wonderful freak of nature he 
is, with his mitre and crosier, all most admirably and venerably 
perfect. The horse, of course, on alighting on the opposite cliff, 
made a deep dent in it with his fore-foot, which yet remains, and 
has, moreover, the additional merit of being on the very loftiest 
and most tremendous spot of the scene, where a sheer precipice 
reveals the river foaming and roaring at an awful depth below. 
From this aerial point you shudder to hear that more than one 
person has in excitement or distress of mind sprung headlong into 
the horrible abyss. A footpath, which conducts thither, is the 
preferable descent; and once below, you will probably confess that 
you were seldom in a more impressive scene. 

At the pretty little watering-place, Alexisbad, we found but 
one solitary guest lingering — the celebrated composer Meyerbeer. 
Thence, by various wanderings through wild valleys, amongst 
mines, mills, and forges; in eilwagens — so called — daily travelling 
over ploughed fields, where yet never was a road since the days of 



464 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Adam, much less of M'Adam, — we rejoiced to set foot in the good 
town of Erfurt, and on a solid pavement. Having duly visited 
Luther's cell in the Augustine monastery, and the fine minster, we 
drove to Weimar. 

How great is our wonder as we first set eyes on that little 
capital of far-spread literary fame. In a naked corn country, from 
a bleak height, you see on the plain below you a little country 
town. And is that Weimar? Can that be Weimar? Is this bare 
and almost featureless country the once abode of Goethe, Schiller, 
Wieland, and Herder, and a host of the most famous spirits that 
Germany has produced ? Is that little town, which, in England, 
with its 10,000 inhabitants, would scarcely catch a passing tra- 
veller's passing attention, the capital which has made such a figure 
in our imaginations as the court of the enlightened Grand Duke 
and Duchess, with their mighty poets about them ? How immensely 
can mind magnify with its greatness and its glory an insignificant 
spot of earth ! or rather, how little is the spot, and how little are 
the means necessary to create a world of intellectual splendour, 
where there is a soul in the ruler. Without this liberal and amiable 
pair, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Weimar, Goethe, Schiller, 
Herder, Wieland, would have still flourished, and scattered their 
imperishable laurels over the Fatherland; but Weimar would have 
been — nothing. But now, here have lived these great men; here 
was formed a little court of intellect and taste, so beautiful and 
unique, that it seems, amid the common-places of this common- 
place world, rather a dream of the romantic ages than a reality; 
and here lie the tombs of these illustrious poets, towards which the 
feet of pilgrims will be directed age after age. 

Wieland lies, indeed, not in Weimar, but in his garden in 
Osmanstadt, a little on the left of the way going from Weimar to 
Jena. Herder lies in the Stadtkirche, near the remains of the 
Grand Duke Bernhard, the noble hero of the Thirty Years' War. 
This church is adorned with a fine altar-piece by the great native 
artist Lucas Cranach, containing portraits of himself, of Melancthon, 
and Luther. The sacristan, as it was cold, obligingly requested 
me to keep on my hat, observing "Luther would not take it ill." 
The remains of Schiller and Goethe lie in the vault of the new 
cemetery, with those of their friends the Duke and Duchess. The 



GERMAN CITIES AM) SCENERY. 465 

sacristan admitted us to a view of them through the fanlight 
over the door, and we could see that the coffins of the poets 
had recently been hung with garlands of evergreens. In the 
cemetery, which lies high and commands a wide view over the 
country, we noticed also the grave of Falk, the literary friend of 
Goethe. 

The sexton, a superior man of his class, appeared proud of being 
the keeper of the remains of the two great poetical lights of Ger- 
many. "Many/' said he, "have seen their place of rest, but I 
laid them there." He had assisted to remove the body of Schiller 
from the Stadtkirche where it was first interred, to this vault, when 
it was prepared for the Grand Duke. He shewed us, what is now 
frequent in Germany, the Todten-Haus, or House of the Dead, 
connected with the cemetery. Funerals in Germany take place 
very quickly after death. By law, in most states, they must, at 
farthest, take place on the third day, but those who have the 
slightest apprehension of a possibility of revival, can have the body 
removed to this house. Here they are laid in a sort of basket, 
and are supported in a recumbent position with pillows. To the 
fingers of the right hand is attached a string connected with a 
larum, so that on the least motion in the hand the larum is set 
loose, and those on the watch rush in to see if resuscitation has 
taken place. The larum hangs in the adjoining apartment, and 
there the sexton sleeps. His family live also in the house, so that 
in the daytime, when he is out, some one shall always be within 
hearing of the alarm. In the night, when a corpse is lying there, 
the police come frequently and knock at the window, and if the 
sexton gives no answer he is severely fined, and on a repetition of 
his neglect would be dismissed. The medical man attends, and the 
body is not interred till he has announced that unquestionable 
symptoms of decay have appeared. I am not aware whether any 
persons have revived under these circumstances, but here the man 
assured us there had been no case of resuscitation since the 
establishment of the Todten-Haus; I believe about seven years. 
There was at this time a very lovely child of about two years old, 
with rich golden locks hanging round its pale face, the sight of which 
was very touching, as you saw that its little fingers would never 
have to pull the bell. Its grave was already dug in the cemetery, 

H H 



466 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

and two young, sorrowful-looking people, whom we had seen 
standing by it, the sexton told us were its parents. 

From this interesting but melancholy scene we returned to the 
town, and visited the houses of Schiller and Goethe. How exactly 
did their respective aspects correspond with the fortunes of the 
two poets. Schiller's, a modest and somewhat common-looking 
house, was that of a man who had neither the worldly tact, nor a 
life sufficiently prolonged to rise out of the narrowness of poetic 
circumstances. That of Goethe was, on the contrary, the hand- 
some abode of the cosmopolitan old Geheimrath, who had as much 
of the man of the world as of the poet in him; who knew the 
world and made it serve him; who lived long to enjoy it, and left 
some of its goods to his descendants. 

It was a great pleasure to find our excellent young friend 
Mr. von Goethe at home, and to receive the cordial welcome of 
his mother, the Frau von Goethe, one of the most lady-like and 
interesting women in Germany. It may be imagined with what 
interest we surveyed this house, which is at once handsome and 
yet unimposing. It seemed to us as if Goethe was still living, and 
might at any moment walk into the room where we happened to 
be. Here was his drawing-room, with the last and best portrait 
of him, full of spirit and character. His bust, taken in his youth, 
with flowing hair, and uncommonly handsome ; by which the Frau 
von Goethe had set a cast of Lord Byron, which she said she 
feared at first would have been too great a trial for the Goethe, but 
which she now thought he stood very well. There was his study 
as he left it, with the breakfast-table of Schiller, which the son of 
Schiller gave to Goethe; a small oval table with a high rim round 
it, evidently calculated for a solitary student breakfasting, not with 
his family, but alone amid his books; and probably used when 
working too intensely at some of his more absorbing dramas, to 
quit his room for a moment. Here was the hall, filled with 
some of the finest casts from the antique, giving a very classical 
aspect to the house as you enter; and behind the house, the 
little retired garden where Goethe used to walk daily for hours, 
working out the progress of the compositions on which he was 
engaged. This interesting house was formerly opened to strangers, 
but the great inconvenience to the family has compelled the restric- 
tion of this privilege to their own friends. 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 107 

Jena, a stage beyond Weimar, over an equally bleak and bare 
country — what a spot is that too, to have made itself so wide a 
notoriety! As we descended the celebrated Schnecken-hill, where 
the French, in 1806, gave the Prussians so severe a drubbing, 
there lay Jena deep in the valley below, a cluster of dark houses 
surrounded by the most naked and desolate hills imaginable. 
Scarcely a tree, except here and there on the slopes masses of 
black pines, or a blade of grass, seemed to grow on these hills. 
They had the colour of bare earth, and the baldness of a most 
ancient sterility. Than the town itself, nothing can be imagined 
more old-fashioned. A little old market-place, with one very old 
dark inn, the Sun; an old town-house, in whose tower a band of 
very ancient-looking musicians appeared at eleven o'clock in the 
forenoon, and flinging open the windows, played for an hour to the 
market-people and the students below; the latter of whom, in very 
short coats and very long hair, there assembled, walked about, 
drank beer, and fenced. A few narrow, old streets, a very ancient, 
heavy and dingy university, with musty library, and grass-grown 
courts — such is Jena. One cannot imagine a more out-of-the- 
world, wild, primitive place for a seat of education. Spite of the 
multitude of celebrated men which it has numbered amongst its 
professors, and of the excessive cheapness of everything, it musters 
now but about 450 students. No doubt this may, in a great 
measure, be accounted for by the wild notoriety of its Burschen, 
who have been more celebrated for their visits to the neighbouring 
villages of Wbllnitz and Lichtenhayn than to lectures, and for 
more copious draughts of the celebrated beer of those places than 
of the professional Helicon. Their headlong plunge into revolu- 
tionary politics, and their dangerous mode of duelling by lunging, 
have also had their effect in this respect. 

In Erfurt, we encountered another of those odd regulations 
regarding travelling which the desire of the governments in Ger- 
many to monopolize the profits of it introduces. We had taken a 
man with his carriage to Weimar and Jena and back again. As 
we were the next morning about to proceed to Gotha, another man 
with whom we had agreed to take us, both on account of the 
greater comfort of his carriage and reasonableness of his demands, 
announced to our great astonishment that he was not allowed to 

hh2 



468 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

go with us. That there was a law, that having engaged one Lohn- 
kutscher for a stage, unless we staid four-and-twenty hours in the 
place, at the end of it, we were bound to take him on. We could 
not credit so absurd a law, which left you at liberty to make a 
bargain with a private man for a certain distance and sum, and 
when you had run the distance and discharged him, yet compelled 
you to take on the same man ad infinitum, unless you staid four- 
and-twenty hours in a place, and whether you like the man and 
found his carriage comfortable or not. But the landlord shewed 
us the printed regulation of Prussia as it hung up in his inn, and 
said that it was the same also in the other states. That this was 
the regulation regarding the government post traveling we well 
knew, but that it extended to the private Lohnkutscher, or men 
who let out private carriages, we could not have believed. The 
object, however, is the same; it is to throw you into the hands of 
government. We could take a carriage from the post. The man 
had been round to all those of his own profession, and not one of 
them dare take us. On the contrary, as they imagined us strangers 
in Germany, and not aware that we could proceed by post, they 
were all assembled in the square before the inn, to see whether we 
should not be obliged to go on with the man who had made this 
unreasonable demand; and they appeared not a little disappointed 
when they saw a carriage from the post, drive up and take us away. 
Shortening days and cold nights at the end of October warned 
us to make a rapid retreat home. We therefore hastily mounted to 
the great, but by no means handsome castle of Gotha, which over- 
looks the little town and a wide naked country; were shewn the 
portrait which Queen Victoria sent before her marriage to Prince 
Albert; and a fine picture of Charles IX. of France, sitting at 
a window after he had fired the signal given for the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, in which the expression of a weak nature, over- 
come by the sense of the horrors which he had thus let loose, is 
admirably depicted. 

Hastily we traversed the beautiful regions of the Thiiringia 
hills and forests, amongst which lies the lovely Reinhardsbrunn, 
the favourite hunting-seat of *the Grand Duke of Saxe Coburg, 
the father of Prince Albert, which is represented on our title- 
page; passed the castles of the Drei Gleichen, where once lived 



GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 1(59 

the knight arid Moorish lady, whose story has been so widely 
read by the lovers of romance — the lady releasing the knight 
from his captivity in the East, and flying with him to Europe, 
where the knight's wife, in gratitude, consents to her husband 
also marrying his deliverer. The Pope grants a dispensation; 
the two wives afterwards live together in the highest friendship; 
and the knight, with one on each hand, eventually is buried 
in the cathedral of Erfurt. This story, which w r as come to be 
regarded but as a romance of the Minnesangers, has been recently 
confirmed by the opening of the tomb of the Drei Gleichen, where 
the evidences of one lady having been European and the other 
Oriental were too strong to be disputed. The skull especially of 
the one lady was of thoroughly Eastern contour. Hastily we 
mounted from Eisenach, to the Wartburg, gazed over the glorious 
scene of forest hills around; saw the apartment of Luther, in which 
he lived in the old castle as Junker Georg; saw, and believed as 
much as we were able, the dint and black stain of the inkstand on 
the wall, which the stout old Reformer flung at the Devil's head; 
and paced with pleasure the old banqueting-hall, whence the holy 
Elizabeth used to convey so many good things to the poor, and 
when met by her more stingy husband, and asked what she had 
got in her mantle, told that pious fib that they were only flowers 
which she had been gathering; on which her husband pulling the 
mantle open, lo! — charity, amongst the multitude of sins, had even 
covered the sin of lying — and, to her own astonishment and her 
husband's great edification, 

Instead of sly cribbage of bread and meat, 
Lilies and roses were showered at their feet. 

We were glad to see this venerable hall in progress of faithful 
restoration, and good paintings of the good deeds of Elizabeth ; of 
the renowned contests of the Minnesangers here; and of other of 
the romantic acts and personages of the court of Thuringia, hung 
on the walls. Thence fled we by eilwagen, through Fulda, Hanau, 
and other places full of literary and historical reminiscences, to the 
stately and substantial Frankfort; visited the house, of course, in 
which Goethe was born; the Jews' quarter, made so interesting in 
his " Wahrheit und Dichtung," and now fast disappearing; the 



470 GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY. 

elegant Ariadne of Dannecker, in Bethmann's garden; and the 
hall of the Rbmer, where the Emperors used to be crowned, and 
where nine full-length portraits of them, by eminent living artists, 
enrich the Avails. Thence, through the too quiet Darmstadt, along 
the feet of the lovely vine-clad hills of the Bergstrasse, to our home 
of two years, Heidelberg. It was to us a great pleasure, as we once 
more approached the garden-like Pfalz, to perceive the country grow 
continually more cultivated; the way-sides more richly bordered 
with fruit trees; the plains more intersected and diversified with 
the same; and everywhere, on hill and dale, a more clothed and 
genial air; and as at length the little city of Heidelberg, with its old 
castle, vine slopes, and enclosing forest hills suddenly opened upon 
us, we were glad to acknowledge that grander scenes we had seen 
in Germany — many; but more smiling and home-like — none. 



eta^iPTiiK 



LITERATURE. 



We have now, in strictness, terminated our subject. We have 
taken a pretty extensive view of the social, picturesque, and 
country life of Germany. But, in order to present our readers with 
a somewhat more complete idea of the German people, we will add 
some passing remarks on the present state of literature, education, 
and religion; and conclude our account, by some observations on 
the condition, present and prospective, of the nation at large. 
These matters, treated fully, would themselves occupy a volume; 
but that would both exceed our plan, and the relative interest in 
these matters in the reading population of England. 

The great feature of general literature, at the present period, as 
it is elsewhere, is rather that of prolific production than of much 
novelty or creative power. The Germans themselves complain 
that the long continuance of peace, and the consequent growth of 
a disposition to mere social amusement, have rendered the literature 
of the day light and trifling. The fact is, that in all ages and 
countries, as is very evident to those who have considered the sub- 
ject, extraordinary intellectual development has been coincident with 
periods of extraordinary political excitement. These periods have 
passed over the earth like waves, by whose rush men have been 
startled out of their lethargic state of enjoyment, and in their 
necessary struggle for life, country, and honour, have put forth 
all their energies, and have achieved deeds which have astonished 
themselves, and much more the ages which came after them. 
These periods, too, have come sometimes like recurring seasons, 
in which the earth seems to throw out its internal heat, and to 
create on its surface a sudden exhibition of life and beauty incon- 
ceivable; by which a new climate has seemed, for a time, to be 



472 LITERATURE. 

created; trees, flowers, all vegetable and even animal organizations 
to receive a strong stimulus from the glowing bosom of the common 
mother; and blossoms, teeming harvests, and a rejoicing prosperity 
everywhere to appear. But more commonly the grand spur to 
the intellectual vigour of the human race has been a period of 
trouble and revolutionary struggle. Oppressions creeping on 
during years of peace pave the way to the outbreak of insurrection 
and war. The masses, with minds embittered by the memory of 
long indignity and cruel usage, burst forth with fury. The frame- 
work of society is dashed to pieces; every species of passion — anger, 
revenge, terror, expectation, and ambition, started forth in their 
strength; deeds of bloody astonishment are done; constitutions and 
thrones are overturned; conquerors, clad in strange success, come 
forth; the human mind, with all its hidden hoards of force and 
feeling, is flung into the highest excitement; and, under this 
excitement, spirits of superior energy are expanded to their utmost 
amplitude, and that in every varied direction. It is then, that not 
only warriors and statesmen, but orators, poets, romance-writers, 
painters, and musicians, equally feel the great spirit of the time, 
and stand forth in unusual greatness, and leave behind them works 
so much above the common scale, that they become, in fact, the 
bold landmarks and memorials of these intellectual inundations. 

Those who choose to amuse themselves with tracing out the 
accuracy of this opinion, will be surprised to see the great proofs 
of it as they proceed. It was amid such commotions — menaces 
from without, and excitements within, threatening the very exist- 
ence of civilization — that all the finest works of art and literature 
in Greece were created. It was in such, that Moses, David, and 
Solomon, and the great prophets appeared in Israel. It was amid 
such that Christ and his Apostles planted the Christian religion. 
In our own country, Shakspeare and Milton stand fast bound with 
the spread of the Reformation, the Spanish Armada, and the 
greatest convulsion that ever shook England — the destruction of 
the Monarchy and the establishment of the Republic. And what 
an outburst of mind in all quarters attended the progress of the 
French Revolution ! As there is in history no political and social 
revolution at all to be compared to this in intense violence and far- 
spreading consequences, so there is no period in which the human 



LITERATURE. 473 

mind has displayed before the whole world such evidences of its 
inexhaustible treasures of strength, of terror, and of beauty. In 
France and in England, what a host of poets, philosophers, men of 
letters, statesmen and warriors, sprung up to prepare the way and 
to carry to its extent this astounding effervescence of human nature. 
It were a long catalogue to enumerate the very names of wonderful 
men, the product of this convulsion. Napoleon and his generals; 
Mirabeau and the orators; Rousseau, Voltaire, the literati and 
philosophers, with the women, De St'ael and Roland, amongst 
them. In England, Pitt, Fox, Burke, with the other great par- 
liamentarians; Nelson and Wellington; and in literature what a 
galaxy of glory, — Byron, Shelley, Scott, Wordsworth, etc. etc. In 
Germany, Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Richter, Herder, with a host 
of great cotemporaries in all the varied fields of science and letters. 
Here are the natural products of this wonderful period, which grew 
and ceased with it. Our giants are dead or dying, in England, and 
we cannot pretend to say that we yet descry above the sea of time 
heads of equal Titanic grandeur emerging. Genius we have in 
abundance; but it seems rather to be the product of the yet un- 
expired vibrations proceeding from that great centre of agitation, 
than to bear any proportion to the great shapes and full growth of 
that wonderful season. 

It is the same in Germany. Schiller and Goethe stand aloft, 
the colossal figures of the world of German poetry. Their Wolf, 
Kant, Fichte, Hegel, are dead; and Schelling stands almost a 
solitary remnant of their great philosophical creation. Their 
Michaelis and Jacobi; their Winckelmann, Niebuhr, and Heeren, 
are gone. In all those departments, however, which demand 
rather plodding industry than creative power, Germany still most 
conspicuously holds aloft her head. In classical and oriental 
researches, and in all the accomplishments of professorial acquisi- 
tion, her learned men go on as steadily plodding as the bauers with 
their ploughs or with the dressing of their vineyards. In history, 
at the present time, they boast distinguished names, — Ranke, 
Leo, Raumer, Schlosser, Gervinus, Kortlim, Lappenberg, historian 
of the Anglo-Saxons, Menzel, and others. In music there are, 
however, no Han dels, Mozarts, Beethovens, Haydns; but painting 
presents a brilliant contrast in the able artists of the Munich and 



474 LITERATURE. 

Diisseldorf schools. In all other regions of the imagination, how- 
ever, the evidences are rather those of great enjoyment of it in 
the works of others than a splendid exercise of it in themselves. 
Uhland and Tieck, of the race of the old giants, still live and 
write; and a numerous body of young aspirants claim their share 
of public attention in poetry and romance and novel writing. But 
these seem generally rather to indulge than to exert themselves. 
They possess much fancy and feeling; but if they have wings like 
the old eagles their fathers, they do not put them forth so daringly. 
In fact the great convulsion, with all its attendant demonstrations, 
is over; and we live now in the interval between its termination 
and the arrival of another, in which the lovely rather than the 
gigantic may be expected. The world must have its pauses of rest, 
as well as its moments of intense action. In these pauses we look 
back at what has just been done, rather than around us in expec- 
tation of what will immediately arise. We are rather in a state of 
wonder and of reflectiveness, than in a mood to be startlingly aroused 
by fresh miracles. In these intervals such apparitions would be 
unnatural, and therefore they are not. Great attempts, without 
an accompanying greatness of events and of public spirit, would 
appear rather convulsive than admirable. They would be out of 
proportion with the times. Neither the influences on the public 
mind would be great enough to produce them, nor to dispose to 
their favourable reception if produced. We have for a time subjects 
enough for wonder; we seek rather those of amusement. How 
very much is that the state of our literature at home. How is 
everything put forth in a periodical form; in gentle and oft- 
repeated doses; not too violent, and not too seldom, lest our deli- 
cate powers of digestion should languish. This is much the same 
in Germany. Poetry abounds, but it takes most commonly the 
lyrical and occasional form. There are much elegance, fancy, and 
feeling; yet, generally speaking, but little grasp of subject, or 
exertion. If you take any of the volumes of the living poets, you 
are amazed at the huge table of contents, — the short and scrappy 
nature of their effusions. Even in Uhland's one volume of 550 
pages there are 270 pieces ; Justinus Kernels one volume of 376 
pages contains 248 pieces; Freiligrath's volume of 512 pages, 146 
pieces; and the somewhat thick volume of Rtickert, 741 pages, 



LITERATURE. ■ 475 

has no less than 671 pieces of poetry. The same is the case 
with the poems of Heine, Anastatius Griin, Lenau, Schwab, or 
of the very recent poets, Hebel, Tiedge, Chamisso, Immerman, 
etc. etc. These writers seem rather to give way to involuntary 
snatches of song, than to put forth with heart and soul a powerful 
voice, or to plan a comprehensive work. They appear rather like 
birds to sit and sing in the sunshine, and amongst the green 
bushes and flowers, than like eagles soaring aloft in their pride, 
and with loud alarms ready to do battle in defence of their eyries. 
For the English taste they are often too quiet, — though, again, 
many of them possess much passion, pathos, and delicate fancy; 
but in juxta-position with the sinewy compositions of Byron, Shelley, 
Burns, or Ebenezer Elliott — 

Who learnt in sorrow what they taught in song — 

and with their indignant contemplation of political and social suffer- 
ings in their fellow-countrymen, such as the Germans have no 
conception of, would appear somewhat insipid, especially when 
many of our countrymen have found too little passion and stir in 
many of the compositions of Schiller, Goethe, and Lessing. But 
the Germans are more sentimental, and more easily satisfied; and 
poems which in an Annual in England would be admired and 
forgotten, in Germany establish a reputation. They live in a less 
agitated sphere, and a less degree of passion is more sensitively 
felt by them. 

Yet there are amongst them young writers perceptible, who in 
a more heated political or social atmosphere would start speedily 
up into a magnitude astonishing to themselves. They are full of 
native vigour, and breathe a fervour of political freedom which 
amazes one, in connexion with the existence of the censorship. 
Such are Herwegh, now a refugee in Zurich, author of " Gedichte 
eines Lebendigen," just published; Dingelstadt, author of " Cos- 
mopolitische Lieder eines Nachtwachter's," an d " Tscherkessische 
Lieder." Anastatius Grim, the Austrian poet and nobleman, besides 
his other poems, has published the bold, and indeed revolutionary 
<( Spatziergange eines Wiener Poeten," from which most of these 
other fiery bards date their inspiration; and Hoffmann von Fallers- 
leben, lately professor at Breslau, but stripped of his professorship 



476 LITERATURE. 

for his " Unpolitische Lieder," has been threatened by the Prussian 
minister with prosecution, and not only his poems, but all the pub- 
lications of his publishers, Canipe and Hoffmann, in Hamburgh, 
forbidden by the king entrance into Prussia. Since the fire at 
Hamburg, the Prussian monarch has taken pity enough on these 
publishers to remove this proscription, but accompanied with a 
solemn warning and an expectation that they will publish no more 
such spirit-stirring lays. 

But more than all, I should say Ferdinand Freiligrath possesses 
the life and vigour with the fiery aspirations of the young poet, 
which more than justify the enthusiasm with which his productions 
have been received all over Germany. They stand amongst those 
of his cotemporaries with bold and prominent effect, and make you 
feel that he needs nothing but the recurrence of a more stirring 
period, the stormy dawn of an eventful day, to spring forth in a 
greatness equal to the occasion. The originality and fire of imagi- 
nation in him are prodigious. You feel that there lies in his 
bosom a well-spring of them, that only requires the jar of a social 
earthquake to send them spouting up like Geysers into the glitter- 
ing air. He is an inspired painter. His words are colours — and 
those of the rainbow, of the sunset, and of the seas and sands of 
the burning tropics. In want of high and fitting theme enough 
at home, he goes wandering round the earth, gathering heat and 
intensity, with which he clothes the Indian and the Arab in their 
native wilds till they glow again, warm as their own rocks and 
deserts. There is a power of language in him which makes the 
hardest German flow like metal in a furnace; and sets desert tents, 
mosques, an army in march, or the negro in his lion-chase before 
you in such life, that you do not read, but see and are present. 
Even with the most insignificant matter, in his hand, such as 
Moos-Thee — that is, an Infusion of Iceland Moss — he brings round 
you the wildest regions in the most vivid reality. The very titles 
of his pieces indicate the character and propensities of his genius. 
" Bible Pictures," « The Steppe," " The Lion Ride," " The Vision 
of a Traveller," " Under the Palms," " Leviathan," " Mirage," 
" The Emigrant Poet," " Henry, the Sea- Voyager," " The Dead 
in the Sea," "Shipwreck," "In Congo," "The Scheik at Sinai 
in 1830," "The Swordmaker of Damascus," "The Songs of the 



LITERATURE. 477 

Pirates/' "The Burial of the Bandit," "The Watcher in the Wil- 
derness/' "The Negro Prince/' "The Greek Woman in the 
Slave Market in 1833," " The Emigrants/' etc. 

In all these he flings himself with such vitality into the scenes 
and characters, that you are in the midst of them in all their truth 
and colour. "The Negro Prince," in particular, is magnificent ; 
and the "German Emigrants/' especially the Schwarzwald girl, 
with her long plaited hair, and German jug in her hand, going 
not to her native well in the Black Forest, but to one in Missouri, 
where the brown Cherokee comes to drink; are so graphically 
brought before you, that no English eye which has seen the original 
scenes and figures can behold them without admiration, and no 
German one, I should imagine, without tears. 

The King of Prussia, with his usual discernment, has bestowed 
a pension on this young and every-day rising poet, and if the 
elements of political commotion, which even to a casual eye appear 
at work in Europe, break forth over the present generation as 
briskly as there is but too much reason to augur that they will, 
there is no writer in Germany who, without being himself political, 
we may prognosticate will ride more loftily on the swell of the 
agitated waters of life, making even wrecks and breakers beautiful 
with his genius. The power with which he describes the destruc- 
tion of the world bound to a comet's tail, like Brunhilde bound by 
Clothaire to the tail of the wild horse, and the burning feelings 
and fancies of a man in fever, shew what he would do in the midst 
of an atmosphere on fire with all that stirs the heart and energies 
of man. 

But Freiligrath's translations from the English are not less 
admirable in their way than his original compositions. In these 
he throws himself as completely into his subject, and exercises the 
same masterly power of language. You forget, when reading his 
translation of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, that you are not reading 
the original. The same may be said of the songs and poems 
of Moore, Lamb, Keats, Burns, Southey, and Scott, which he 
has translated. " The World is all a fleeting Show," and " The 
Pibroch of Donald Dhu," are truly wonderful. We hear that he 
is now engaged in translating Mrs. Hemans' poems, of which one 
little gem, " The Better Land," appears in his ow r n volume. 



478 LITERATURE. 

Freiligarth is well acquainted with English literature; and by 
translations and criticisms, particularly in the Morgenblatt, he 
makes Germany acquainted with it. It was he who first, through 
this means, awakened the Germans to a knowledge of the excellence 
of Burns, and now they have three translations of that poet. He is 
a great admirer of the poetry of Mrs. Howitt and Ebenezer Elliott, 
and has introduced various of their poems to his countrymen. 

In the German prose works of imagination, much the same 
qualities prevail. The dreamy and speculative turn of the people 
is conspicuous in the greatest of their Romance writers ; amongst 
them Jean Paul Richter, Goethe, La Motte Fouque, Musaeus, 
Hoffmann, etc., to stich a degree, that to general English readers 
very few of their stories possess a sufficient interest. Of all 
Fouque's writings " Undine" alone has become popular in England; 
of all Richter's none, some fragmentary articles being translated, 
and they only esteemed by people of very imaginative minds. 
They are too fanciful, wild, and extravagant. Those of Richter are 
too dark, both in style and idea, for the ordinary reader. Most 
of them have too little of the stir and passion of real life for us. 
These characteristics prevail equally in the living, or recent 
authors. Hauff's Tales present, perhaps, the most popular excep- 
tion, in some of which, taking the hint from Walter Scott, he has 
engrafted historical subjects on fine scenery in his native kingdom 
of Wiirtemberg with great effect. In others, however, as the Me- 
moirs of Satan, and the Rathskeller in Bremen, the German taste 
prevails. But German life is too quiet and uniform to furnish 
a fertile source of romantic and novel fiction, and therefore they 
fly to other countries for a supply of these articles. England, 
France, and even America, pour them in in abundance. It is a 
singular circumstance, but a perfectly natural result from the 
different national characteristics, that while we rarely translate a 
German book, and read comparatively few of them in the original, 
whole cargoes of ours are every year translated into German, and 
devoured with avidity. There is scarcely a work of imagination, 
of any note, which is not immediately translated, or, at least, 
reprinted and circulated to a great extent; though our best modern 
poetry and works of more solid literature are very little known to 
the general reader. To such an extent is the translating and 



LITERATURE. 479 

reprinting of novels carried, that there appears very little discrimi- 
nation used; and while Bulwcr, Boz, Marryat, and James, are the 
great favourites, you also find the trashiest wish-wash of Lady 
Blessington, or even more slipshod writers, just as much in vogue. 
In fact, the position of England, the free spirit of its constitution 
and public life, its multiplied and multifarious connexions with 
other countries, with the sea, and with colonies; its sailors, its 
merchants; its working-classes in their half-starving masses, and 
its aristocracy with their pride and splendour ; all these things 
give a piquancy and variety of subject, scene, and character, which 
are not readily exhausted, and offer a most agreeable contrast 
to the quiet monotony of German existence. Their tales of the 
Middle Ages; of knights, castles, monks and ghosts, are worn out, 
and in default of real vai'iety of modern life, they are too apt 
to run into wildly grotesque scenes amongst modern characters, 
which exist nowhere but in the writer's head. In others they are 
fond of indulging in a species of story half-miraculous, half-poetic, 
very ideal, very beautiful in sentiment and feeling, but which would 
only please the really poetical of English readers. Such are many 
of the Novellen, or little tales of Tieck; the Heimatlosen, or the 
Homeless of Kerner, and many others which might be mentioned. 
These, in fact, border on their popular Marchen, or traditions of 
the people, in which the old and more amiable superstitions are 
retained, — in which good as well as bad spirits prevail in nature; 
the good, however, possessing a decided superiority of influence, 
and a strong sympathy for whatever is true and beautiful in the 
heart of man. This same sympathy likewise lives throughout 
uature, and is strongly testified. All that is lovely in children, or 
in old age, lives and is embraced livingly by this mother-heart of 
nature. In deep woods children wander, awed by the solemn 
spirit of the place; but good eyes are upon them, and angels guide 
them on their way. In the sunshine of flowery meadows, by the 
glittering gush of crystal wells, angels and fairies whisper heavenly 
thoughts to the spirit of lovely children. Flowers are full of the 
same heavenly life and soul, and spring up and bloom in the most 
poetic and sympathetic beauty. They are actual revelations from 
God ; emanations out of his paradise ; fac-similes of things which 
grow there in the everlasting radiance. In old chapels, and on 



480 LITERATURE. 

crosses, and in niches by the way-side, the figure of the Saviour 
and Virgin, of saints and angels, are not mere stone, but possessing 
a mysterious animation in this living sympathy. Dreams and 
visions of heavenly glory come to young maidens, who are too fair 
and fragile for this earth. Birds fly and sing, inspired by over- 
watching natures for the warning and guidance of the good. 
The intercourse which, in the earlier ages of the world and of 
the church, was maintained between heaven and man, is main- 
tained still, but with the veil of nature drawn, and scarcely drawn 
between. Trees, in their vernal leaves; flowers floating on the 
breezy bough, or on the waters; the summer sounds of the forest 
and the glen, — all are full of the life, and agency, and poetry of 
this but dimly-concealed world. The children of this poetical 
faith walk already in alliance with the world of spirits. Warnings, 
presentiments, and apparitions, are as richly conceded to those 
who live thus near to God, to heaven, and to their departed kindred, 
as ever they were. Mothers and sisters appear in morning dreams, 
circled with celestial halos, and standing in the golden sunshine 
of heaven, to call their children or friends from earth. Bells ring 
out mysteriously; aerial music summonses away the dying — and 
old and young steal so easily out of life, dissolve, as it were, but into 
a purer and sunnier medium; and leave behind remains stamped 
with a grace so saintly, that death is stripped of its terrors, and 
seems a change as ardently to be desired as the bursting from the 
chrysalis sarcophagus of the jewel-winged moth. 

But this enchanted world, which, according to these writers, is 
still this world of ours, only that our hearts are become too gross 
through pride and self-greatness to perceive it, we having alienated 
ourselves from Nature, and not Nature withdrawn herself from us 
— this world has also its evil influences; witches, cobolds, devils, 
spirits of mountain, forest, and marsh, ready to make league with 
the unwary or the base, who forsake the heavenly natures; and 
these work often in the shapes of witches, owls, ravens, he-cats, 
snakes, goats, which last seem to be in particular alliance with 
Satan, and finally step-mothers; against whom, justly or unjustly, 
the German stories are universally very bitter. On the contrary, 
certain animals are regarded with peculiar favour, as in alliance 
with the good influences of nature; as the hare, the stork, the dove, 



LITERATURE. 481 

the little shining lizard, what is odd enough, the ass and the bear, 
and a variety of singing birds. The cock plays a conspicuous part 
in all these stories, and you can scarcely read them without seeming 
to lie amid woods, and hearing the cocks crowing lustily in the 
silent villages. 

These writers generally belong to the Catholic church, and have, 
many of them, more than a poetical faith in what they write. 
They seem to believe every creature endowed with a soul; and we 
may perhaps trace to this poetic and even religious feeling, thus 
inculcated in legend and story so generally into the minds of the 
children, that much greater regard for the comfort of many animals 
than we see in England. The most abused of creatures, the ass, is 
never here seen the miserable object which he is with us. That most 
barbarous sight, so continually to be seen in summer in England, 
and especially in the neighbourhood of large towns, the wholesale 
dragging out of birds' nests, many of them full of young ones often 
without a feather, which undergo the worst of tortures, the being 
stuffed with unnatural food, and chirp and chirp till they are dead, 
and are as often ruthlessly dashed against posts or on the ground, 
is never seen here. A boy with a bird's nest in his hand would be 
looked on as a monster. Governments do not disdain to legislate 
for such small things as wrens and finches, and a fine of from one 
shilling to five, in different states, is levied on the plunder of 
their nests. 

Coleridge probablylearnedhere to feel that spirit which prompted 
him to write his Sonnet to an Ass — "Poor little foal of an oppressed 
race ! " That which has been so unmercifully ridiculed in England 
would have excited a very different feeling in Germany. Justinus 
Kerner, a popular poet, a good physician, and a very gentlemanly 
man, can even see in the meek large eye of the calf, as it is driven 
by the butcher to slaughter, a spirit of mild patience, which will 
cry for judgment against him who unnecessarily misuses it. But, 
indeed, Kerner walks amongst spirits as commonly as amongst his 
fellow men. They pass in and out of his house at Weinsberg 
familiarly. He sees trains of angels on the Weibertreue, the castle- 
hill opposite his house, celebrated as the spot where, when besieged 
by Conrad III., the men being all vowed by him to the sword, but 
the women offered the liberty to march out with what they prized 

i i 



482 



LITERATURE. 



most, they came forth, each carry ing her husband, her lover, or her 
brother. Devils enter also, and he finds it hard work to expel 
them; nay, one inveterate imp has taken possession of a tower 
belonging to his house, and defies all processes of ejectment. In 
his poems, many of which are very beautiful, and in his singular 
work Die Seherin von Prevorst, you have all these notions forcibly 
given, and yet in all else Justinus Kerner is a perfectly rational, 
a jocose, and a shrewd man. 



We have spoken in a former part of the volume of the compa- 
ratively little encouragement of female writers in Germany, yet that 
the German ladies in the present day increasingly cultivate litera- 
ture, and plunge more adventurously into authorship, the follow- 
ing list of those who now are, or were recently living, will very 
agreeably testify. 

Maria Sophia Christina von Plessen has written under the name of Maria, 
various romances and novels, which appeared in the years 1819-24. Is probably 
yet living. 

Sophie Fried. Elizabeth Mayer, under the name of Sophie May, wrote twelve 
volumes of tales, and translated many of Scott's novels. Has been some years 
deceased. 

Frederikc Brun, wife of Privy-councillor Brun, of Gotha, wrote some beautiful 
poems. Deceased. 

Philippine von Melting. 

L. Miililbach, wife of the author, Theodore Mundt. She has written romances 
and novels which are very popular. She is living. 

Rosalie Miiller has written various novels. 

Benedictine Naubert has written many romances, and particularly Marchen. 

Henriette Ottenheimer has written poems and tales. Yet lives. 

Caroline Pichler. Her collected works, consisting of poems, romances, dramatic 
pieces, and prose essays, appeared in Leipsic from 1820 to 1835, in fifty volumes. 
She lives yet in Vienna, and is as popular as she is voluminous. 

Frau von Paalzow has written the romances Godwie Castle and St. Roche, which 
have created a very great sensation. Living. 

Louise von Plonnies writes poems, and translates English poetry into German. 

Johanna Neumann, under the name J. Satori, born Hiesse, has written a great 
number of romances, and is probably yet living. 

Johanna Schoppenhauer. Her collected works, principally romances, appeared 
in twenty-four volumes in the years 1829-32. She is very popular. 

Amalie Schoppe, born Weise, wrote many popular romances. 

Wilhelmine Sostmann, born Blumenhagen, has written poems, novels, and 
romances. These four, if not living yet, are deceased within the last few years. 



LITERATURE. 483 

Franziska von Stengel has written many volumes of historical romances. She 
lives in Mannheim. 

Adelheid von Stolterfoth, a canoness in a convent on the Rhine, has written 
various epic and other poems, particularly " Sagas of the Rhine." Yet living. Her 
poems are characterized by great vigour, and tender and beautiful feeling. 

Fanny Tarnow has written a great multitude of tales and romances. If not 
living, only recently deceased. 

Antonie Friederike Varnhagen von Ense, born Rachel Levin, and under the 
name of Rachel has acquired great fame by her splendid letters. 

Frau von Weissenthurn has written many very beautiful dramatic works. Lately 
deceased. 

Agnes Franz has written romances, saga, and poems. Living. 

Charlotte Birch Pfeiffer has written several dramatic works and romances, and 
is now directress of the theatre at Zurich. 

Louise Brachmann wrote romances, poems, and novels. She drowned herself. 

Sophie Brentano. She appeared first as a writer under the name of Sophie 
Mereau. She wrote romances and poems, and translated novels from the English. 
Is probably deceased. 

Bettina Brentano, now Bettina von Arnim, has written " Correspondence of 
Goethe with a Child," and " The Giinderode," a romance in letters. She yet lives 
a widow in Berlin. Her writings, especially " The Giinderode," are extremely 
wild and extravagant; but at the same time full of fine thoughts and beautiful 
feeling, and are by many, especially the young and the ladies, extremely admired. 

Wilhelmine Christiane von Chezy, born Klenke, has written romances and poems. 
Probably living. A writer, I think Sapin, made the following epigram on her : 
Helmine von Chezy 
Geborne Klenke 
Ich bitte Si', geh' Sie, 
Mit Ihrer Poesie 
Sonst kriegt sie die Kranke ! 
The point and puns in this are not readily conveyed into English. The pith of it is 
that the wag advises her to away with her poetry, or she will grow intolerable. 

Anette Freiherrin von Droste-Hiiishof writes very beautiful poems, and lives in 
or near Miinster. 

Caroline, Baroness de la Motte-Fouque, born von Briest, has written a great 
many romances and comedies. Probably yet living. 

Amalie Winter, yet living, is author of novels and tales. 

Regina Frohberg, born Salomon, has written many romances and tales. Probably 
yet living. 

Wilhelmine von Gersdorf, yet living, has written a great multitude of romances, 
novels, and tales. 

Frau Elise Philippine Amalie^Hohenhausen, yet living, writes sketches of travel, 
novels, and tales. 

Henriette Hohenhausen, yet living, writes poems and novels. 

Ida, Grafin Hahn-Hahn, yet living, is a very celebrated writer of poems, 
romances, and sketches of travel. 

Henriette Wilhelmine Hanke, born Arndt, yet living and very popular, is author 
of many tales and romances. 

n2 






484 LITERATURE. 

Amalie von Hedwig, born von Imhoff. She is author of many romances, tales, 
and poems ; one of the last an epic. Her well-known Saga of the Wolfsbrunnen 
near Heidelberg, was taken bodily possession of by Grattan, author of " High-ways 
and By-ways," who lived some time very near the scene of the Saga. His "Legend 
of the Wolfsbrunnen" is literally that of Madame von Hedwig, except that he has 
inverted her story, putting her first part second, and the second first. 

Sophie von la Roche, born Gutermann. She lived in the time of Wieland, and 
wrote many tales. 

Friedericke Lohmann wrote, in 1794, poems; and her daughter, Emilie Frie- 
derike Sophie, wrote, under the name of Friederike Lohmann, many romances and 
tales. The last is probably living. 

Caroline Lyser, improvisatrice and poetess, is yet living. 

Henriette Hiille, born Hoffmeier, yet living, has written poems and a romance. 

Sophie Ludwig wrote, 1799-1817, many tales. 

Ida Freiligrath, wife of the celebrated poet, is said also to possess high literary 
talent, and to be at present engaged with her husband in the translation of the 
" Forest Sanctuary," and some of the minor poems of Felicia Hemans. 

The daughter of Tieck the poet possessed great genius, and translated some of 
the Plays of Shakspeare, in the edition of Tieck and Schlegel. 

Louise Manzoll. 

Elise von Recke, Reichsgrafin. 

Amalie Sophie, Princess of Saxony. 

Therese Huber wrote several distinguished novels and tales. The romance 
" Ellen Perry, or Education by Chance ;" the story of " Hannah the Foundling," etc. 
Is probably deceased. 



(gKJAtPTIK 



EDUCATION. 



The Germans deserve in nothing greater thanks from mankind 
than for their efforts in behalf of education. For their deep and 
sagacious inquiries into its real nature and true objects; for their 
planning and organizing an effective system; for their admirable 
classification of the schools; their internal arrangement — but far 
above all, for the extension of them to the whole population. They 
have been the first to exhibit the true thankfulness for the blessing 
of knowledge, by making, as far as their power extended, all man- 
kind partakers with them. In this respect they have been the 
first to act on the great Christian maxim, of doing as you would 
be done by, of loving your neighbour as yourself. As George III. 
wished that every man in his dominions might never want a 
Sunday's dinner and a Bible to read after it, so the Germans have 
wished that every man, woman, and child, should have an education; 
and they have not only wished it, but decreed it. This glorious 
advance in the true science of government has raised no little sen- 
sation throughout Europe, and has created a large party in England 
who, ashamed of our own neglect, ashamed of the stride which 
Germany has made ahead of us in this respect, are zealous to 
achieve the like grand object. The fears, however, that religion 
should not be taught in a national system, or should be taught by 
the wrong persons, scared away vast numbers from the project, and 
as many others shrunk back in terror, lest general education of the 
working classes should prove a general ruin of them as workers 
and servants. 

As to the religious alarms, the slightest inspection of the work- 
ing of the German schools in this respect would satisfy the most 
scrupulous. Nothing is so simple and so satisfactory. The ordinary 



486 EDUCATION. 

teachers do not meddle with religion, this is taught to the children 
by their own minister on days set apart. All goes on as smoothly 
as a locomotive on a good railway, in which nobody troubles him- 
self about proselyting his neighbour. Here are no fears, no 
jealousies, no proselyting, nor growth of any particular evil, except 
what some of our countrymen consider the greatest — general 
education. As to spoiling the working classes, however, or filling 
their heads with any idea of leaping out of their own class and 
proper pursuits, this is just the point on which such timorous 
persons would be the most astonished. In fact, the general results 
of universal education, beyond the promotion of universal order, 
are very different to what we would a priori have imagined. 

As far as the education of the higher classes, and of all those 
proposing for office, is concerned, nothing can be more excellent. 
There are, it is true, heart-burnings and disputes between the 
Burger schools — those for the education of citizens and lower 
officials, and the Gymnasia, or schools for preparation for an aca- 
demic course — arising from the natural desire of the burgher class 
to have the classics, which the Gymnasia consider it as their proper 
business to teach, introduced into the Burger schools. But beyond 
this, all is thoroughly harmonious. Education in all German 
schools alike has this general character. It is methodically, 
actively, and perseveringly pursued. The children are kept hard 
at work. Their business is admirably arranged, and such a circle 
of languages and branches of instruction taught as would astonish 
the greater part of our parents and teachers. Having not only 
observed for myself, but watched the progress of my own boys, I 
can speak confidently on this head. Thus are habits of diligence 
and acquisition laid, which are so marked a feature in the German 
character. The young men of the higher classes are in conse- 
quence a thoroughly well-educated class; and possess besides, the 
accomplishments of music and singing almost universally, to a degree 
very uncommon amongst our young men of a similar station. 

In the Burger classes, who naturally take away their sons at a 
much earlier period to business, the circle of science is, of course, 
not so ample, nor so far carried out, but the instruction in the par- 
ticular branches more necessary to them, is pushed as far as the 
time possibly admits. After all, I would not pretend to say that 



EDUCATION". 487 

this class, or the upper ones, are more able or intelligent than the 
corresponding ones in our own country. I should say that the 
Germans are more methodically and thoroughly instructed in the 
schools than the English; but that the English generally, in the 
progress of life, acquire a greater mass of general knowledge. The 
education of the German seems to cease, in a great measure, with 
his departure from school or college. Each man passes into his 
office or his shop, and smoking his pipe and enjoying the society 
of his friends, lets fall, perhaps, much which he has acquired; 
pursuing only with a sort of military precision the track of his 
profession, and its adherent information. The education of the 
Englishman on the contrary, merely, on leaving school or college, 
undergoes a change. The world, commerce, politics, parliament; 
the various courses of life which are open to him; the various 
interests with which, by party, by property, by speculations, he 
becomes connected, — all are courses of education to him, in which 
he acquires a varied mass of knowledge such as individuals of few 
other countries possess. 

It is the same with the manufacturing and shop-keeping 
classes. The various pursuits of trade, of politics, in which they 
engage; the various interests which they possess in machinery, 
lands, houses, gas-works, water-works, roads; the various com- 
mittees of which they are members, to conduct public and private 
affairs; the management of the poor, societies for various social 
objects, etc. etc.; almost all of which, in England, are carried on by 
private exertions and individuals, and not by government, — these 
are, each and all, great schools. The Englishman of this class has 
often received a less regular and thorough education than his peer in 
Germany; in many instances of great success in life, scarcely any at 
all; but the mass of practical knowledge and the activity of mind 
in the two, are not to be compared. In all that relates to the under- 
standing and management of the business of life, the Englishman 
stands first. We frequently, between him and the German, see 
often demonstrated the difference between education of the schools 
and self-education. In the one case all is done for the person, and 
therefore he does little for himself. He acquires no spirit of enter- 
prise, of self-reliance; he becomes the creature of forms, and walks 
leisurely and by rule. In the other, so little is done for the person 



488 EDUCATION. 

that he feels every hour the necessity of doing for hhnself. He is 
thrown into a stirring world, where he feels that there is no medium 
between fighting his way and being trodden underfoot. He has 
a thousand obstacles, and but little scientific guidance; but he 
takes his little talent in his hand, watches all the chances of life, 
and finds it grow like a snow-ball flung down a hill. Like a man 
wanting an ear or an eye, his other senses and faculties become 
proportionably sharpened. The necessity of exertion invigorates 
the whole constitution of his mind. What he wants in early dis- 
cipline, experience becomes to him; what he lacks in methodical 
science he gains in quickness and adaptability of genius. Thus it 
is that even too much may be done for individual success; and 
while nothing can excel the learnedness, method, and complete- 
ness with which the German lectures on all kinds of art, science, 
and management; of agriculture, government, and administration 
of justice, including the business of public offices, posting and 
police; it is nevertheless true, that in three months in London, 
in shop, warehouse, office, or in any branch of physical science, 
the German would acquire more practical knowledge than he 
now learns from generation to generation.* They have admirable 

* I have often spoken of the formalities of German offices. In the mere matter 
of sending a parcel, which any coach-office in England would forward without delay, 
if only wrapped in a bit of brown paper, and tied with a string, what difficulties 
meet you in Germany! A parcel must be wrapped in a certain way. It must have 
so many seals upon it. Its contents and value must be written outside. If of one 
weight, must go by one conveyance; if of another, by a second; if of another, by a 
third. It must under certain circumstances be wrapped in an oil-cloth. Failing 
any one of these formalities it cannot go. It is returned, or sent from one office to 
another, till more time is consumed than is necessary to take it to its destination. 
A title-deed was sent from England for my signature, which was urgently wanted 
back by return of post. Though signed and sent to the packet-post the same day, 
under the directions of our German banker, yet so many obstacles arose that, after 
several days delay, we sent it by the omnibus proprietor to the Steam Company at 
the Rhine. Two months afterwards, the sender in England wrote, in great distress 
to know why the deed was not returned; and on inquiry at the omnibus proprietor's, 
we found it still lying in his house! The Rhine Company had not dared to take it 
because it belonged to the Packet-post department; and the poor man could not tell 
to whom to return it. He had even advertised it in the little Heidelberg news- 
paper, which we never see; but though there were only about six English families 
in the place, and he knew it came from one, it had never occurred to him to send 
round and inquire. A common hostler, or boots, in England, would have done it 
in ten minutes. In four months the parcel reached England ! ! 



EDUCATION. 489 

lecturers on chemistry, pharmaceutics, mechanics, and physics; but 
in all chemical and pharmaceutical preparations, and in mechanical 
practice, how far, in general, stands Germany behind England. 
The activity of mind, the sharpening of his faculties, the facility 
of his movements, both bodily and mental, which the free consti- 
tution of England, and the conducting of most, if not the whole 
of the economy of society by individual enterprise, instead of by 
government, and the perpetual discussion in newspapers, journals, 
and conversation of every possible point of political science, of 
religious dogma, and every question of social interest, give to 
the Englishman, are his grand education. It is a fact, too, that 
notwithstanding the large libraries to be found in the large cities 
and university towns of Germany, and the liberality with which 
they are opened to the public use; yet in other towns the sub- 
scription libraries are generally very inferior to what we have 
now in our provincial towns, and therefore the facilities for sub- 
stantial reading amongst the mass of citizens are less. This 
amongst the lesser tradesmen and mechanics applies with still 
greater force. The artizan has his library in most English towns, 
and now makes great use of it. He reads and discusses every 
point of politics, and acquires thereby a vivacity and activity of 
mind very striking when compared with his peer in other countries. 
Thus, in the burgher class in Germany, though we should perhaps 
find more who would read Schiller and Goethe than of the same 
class in England who would read Milton and Shakspeare; yet in the 
Englishman, with a less intellectuality of taste, a far greater mass 
of political knowledge and vigorous adaptability of mind exists. 
A survey of the libraries from which the shop-keeping class in 
England and in Germany derive their respective books, would shew 
a curious contrast. The Englishman of this class has evinced a 
growing disposition to become a member of a subscription library; 
even if it were only of the artizan's library. In either of these he 
reads more and more of travels, of history, of the best fictions, and 
works of a miscellaneous character; and he has of late years bought 
largely of the very cheap reprints of our standard authors, which 
have been so extensively circulated. Here, the lower we go, the 
wider becomes the difference between the spread of general infor- 
mation in the two countries. In both, the common circulating 



490 EDUCATION. 

library is, to use a country phrase, pretty much of a muchness. 
It abounds with the worst of trash; but while to the lower class of 
tradesmen and artizans in England the subscription libraries furnish 
a large and rational resource, in German towns the circulating 
library is too much left to be the resource of the lower burgher and 
mechanic. And what a world of wild and horrific matter is that ! 
With a thin sprinkling of the best authors, Schiller, Goethe, Eichter, 
Herder, etc. — what bombastic and horror-breathing titles meet us 
on all sides! " The Wandering Spirit;" "The Enchanted Dag- 
ger;" "The Blood-red Death-torch;" "The Subterranean Blood- 
Doom of Barcelona;" "Drahomeia, with the Serpent-ring, or 
Nightly Wanderings in the Dungeon of Horror, at Karlstein, 
near Prague;" " The Ghostly Mother of the Rock of Gutenstein;" 
"The Flammen-ritter, or the Death-dance in the Wienerwald;" 
"The Prophetic Dream-shape;" li The Bandit from Honour and 
Misanthrope;" " Rauhenstein, or the Blood-bath in the Hellenen- 
Thal, near Baden," etc. etc. 

Here then we come to the point of the most surprising and 
singular peculiarity in the educational provisions of the two 
countries. While England has been bitterly upbraided, and not 
unjustly, for the neglect of the education of its working classes by 
government, there is no country in which so much has been done 
by the people themselves, and by the press, for the diffusion of 
popular information, and for supplying intellectual aliment to all 
as fast as they become educated. With our cheap books, periodicals 
and newspapers, we have even outrun the progress of our schools, 
and the moment a man can read, he finds knowledge lying all 
round him like a manna. While Germany, on the other hand, 
has done so much for universal education, there are few countries 
which have done less for carrying out the legitimate purposes of 
education, by supplying the great mass with sound sources of 
information as fast as they are prepared for it. 

The English mechanic has his library, his newspapers, and 
his cheap and yet handsome editions of standard authors. The 
German mechanic has few or none of these. The English mechanic 
finds in his library a multitude of the best authors in his language; 
but the German, if he found them, could not read them. Our 
language, simple in its construction, and written in a popular 



EDUCATION. 491 

style, is as intelligible to a tolerably sensible mechanic as to a 
lord; but it is very different with the German. This language is 
most artificial in its construction, and involved in its style. The 
common people cannot pretend to speak, or even to comprehend 
its grammatical niceties; and as it is written by the standard 
authors, it is as much Greek to them as Greek itself. This is a 
great obstacle to the spread of intelligence amongst the multitude. 
They must be educated far beyond what they are at present, to 
comprehend the best writers of their native language. For this 
reason, we see no such cheap re-prints of all the best authors in 
Germany, as we see in England. They have, it is true, their 
Penny Magazine and Penny Cyclopedia; but these do not go 
amongst the multitude, as do our Penny Magazine, Sattirday 
Magazine, and Chambers' Journal. Their minds are not quickened 
by politics, for that is a dead region to them. Their newspapers 
contain a scrap of news from all parts of the world; more from 
other countries than their own. Discussions of political topics, 
bold callings in question of their government's acts, there are 
none. The world of politics, with all its mind-stirring schemes, 
is shut to them; and if they venture into it, they soon knock 
their heads against so many posts-and-rails of government prohi- 
bition that they are glad to walk out again. 

But this is still more vastly the case in the country. Here lies 
the great difference between English and German society; here 
lies the great difference between the facilities for the spread of 
popular information between the two countries. In England a 
mixed population lives throughout the whole country; rich and 
poor, all classes live there: but as we have earlier remarked, the 
case is totally different in Germany. There is nothing like our 
English rural life there. The great mass of the population of 
Germany is agricultural, and therefore lives in the country; but 
that mass is almost purely and exclusively a peasantry. In each 
village is a clergyman and a doctor, with perhaps an official of one 
kind or another; and all besides are of the Bauer-stand, the rank 
of peasants, be they rich or poor. They most of them possess 
land, and all are to a degree educated. But they have no politics 
to rouse them ; and with few exceptions, no examples of greater 
elegance of life, or greater intelligence, to excite their emulation. 



492 EDUCATION. 

They are all alike, they see no necessity for an advance in mental 
cultivation. All work hard, smoke hard, many drink hard, and 
the young dance hard; and so they go through the world. 

What then is the state of education amongst this great and 
prevalent class — amongst what, indeed, may he called the people 
in Germany? All go to school, i. e., in winter all the children go 
to school the greater part of the day. In summer they go from 
six in the morning till eleven, which is their dinner-time. This, 
with an interval or two for play, is their school day in summer. 
In the afternoon they go to the fields and woods to labour. At 
twelve or fourteen years of age they quit the school altogether; 
and all work — father, mother, brothers and sisters — in the fields. 
Their life, as we have seen, is a life of incessant labour. What 
education they therefore acquired in school is all that they do 
acquire. This consists of a little reading, writing, arithmetic, 
and singing. This is their education, and here it ceases. They 
never pursue it farther themselves. They have no time, and no 
inclination. Whatever might be the case in England, — however 
there a universal education might set all heads on fire; turn 
ploughmen into poets, fillers of carts and fellers of wood into 
philosophers, millers into metaphysicians, and patchers of soles 
of shoes into preachers to souls of men, — there is not a glimpse 
of such an effervescence in Germany. The working people are 
artizans and Bauers, and nothing more. There can be no greater 
proof of it than, though they once had a glorious old poetical 
shoemaker, Hans Sachs, they yet have no Burns, no Hogg, no 
Allan Cunningham, no Clare, no Bloomfield.* But there is still 
a more curious proof of it, and that is in the books which this 
class, this universally educated class of Germany, actually read at 
this moment. These may be seen by any one on the stalls of any 
fair. This is a curious spectacle, and deserving of the most 
particular notice of the friends of popular education. In Germany, 
the country of this universal education, where this has in some 
States been established for these twenty years and more, behold 
the book shop from which the bulk of the working population 
derive their supply of reading! 

* In Carlsruhe there is a Baker-poet, of some reputation; and an Austrian 
common soldier, Hilscher, is said to have made an admirable, if not the very best, 
German translation of Childe Harold. He died neglected and in want! 



EDUCATION. 493 

Justinus Kerner, a man as well acquainted as any with the 
people of his own country, thus introduces the popular book-stall 
in his " Reiseschatten." "A booth with Folks Books and Folks 
Songs drew me forward. The Jager and the miller youth were 
already there. The Jiiger sought for the song 'The J'ager from 
the Palatinate;' the miller bought the pamphlet entitled 'The 
Miller's Garland of Honour.' The maidens from the next fountain 
were all got round the stall, and the vender was assaying the newest 
songs for them with the accompaniment of a dulcimer. The Jager, 
a handsome young man, kissed one of the maidens after another, 
and they did not take it ill. The miller youth would have done 
the same, as I well saw, but he was young and not so confident. 
Perhaps he was already in love, for he purchased the song ' Oh ! 
were I but a Bird;' and hummed aloud, ' Greet my Love a thousand 
times.' But the Jager looked on the girls like the roes in the 
forest, as all belonging to him, and therefore he clasped two in 
each arm. 

" It was at this stall that were purchased fine pictures, hearts 
filled with rhymes, and printed love-letters, which 

Were written in the city, 

Where love doth never tire, 
And written in the year 

When love was all a fire. 

Probably many a dear child stood here who purchased a painted 
heart, and found in her bosom a love-warm one. Most of the damsels 
purchased f The Holy Genovefa.' ' That,' said one, ' is out of the 
Bible — the greatest love of a book.' 'Nay,' said another, 'the 
Horned Siegfried is much more to my taste.' ' Ah ! ' because thy 
lover is a soldier,' replied her neighbour; and the maiden laughed 
and reddened, shewing that she had been rightly hit. 

"'Ah, have you now? Is it there yet? God be thanked, 
there it hangs,' cried a youngster crushed through the throng, 
and tearing from the string ' The Four Heymon's Children,' flung 
down the money, and away." 

This favourite stall of the country people is, in fact, hung all 
round with prints, coloured in flaming style, of Christ, the Virgin, 
Saints, Buonaparte, etc. Numberless songs flutter on wretched 
paper; there, painted and gilt hearts, with verses printed in them, 



494 EDUCATION. 

lie in heaps with the printed love-letters, amongst which every one 
finds one expressive of his feelings, and purchasing, encloses in a 
cover. There are also plenty of kalendars, mostly in the shape of 
a boy's copy-book. Every peasant buys a kalendar, which, besides 
all almanac matters, is adorned with wood-cuts, and enriched with 
a miscellany of selected matter for fireside reading. Folks kalendars, 
of a much more handsome description, are sold in the shops, but 
are bought rather by the other classes than the Bauer. 

Besides these, are piles of little books, the popular literature 
of all agricultural and hand-working Germany; and even great 
favourites amongst the poetical of all classes. Most of them are 
on wretched paper, with wood-cuts of the rudest kind. Some are 
for the Catholic population; and did we not see it, we could not 
have believed that at this time of day in any country, much less 
in that of Protestantism and popular education, such childish trash 
could be read and credited. But that these are read and heartily 
believed, their constant and extensive sale at the stalls is sufficient 
evidence. In the more thoroughly Catholic states we repeatedly 
asked the booksellers whether the peasantry purchased many books. 
The universal answer was — "Not a book, except kalendars and 
prayer-books." These books present by far too striking an exhi- 
bition of the state of mind and intelligence in a Catholic population, 
even when living surrounded by and mixed up with Protestants, 
and educated in the same national schools with them, to be passed 
over without some marked notice. One of these little books, 
"Geistliches Gnaden-Brimnlein mit Zwolf Rohren" — Little spiri- 
tual Fountain of Grace with twelve Pipes — contains this, amongst a 
heap of equally marvellous matter: — "A little girl tended cattle 
in Bavaria, in fields where stood an old stone image of the Mother 
of God. The Virgin appeared to her and offered to teach her a 
prayer, on condition that she taught it to others. The little maid, 
however, kept the prayer to herself. She died, but could not rest 
in her grave. Being demanded by the priest why she walked, she 
replied because she had kept this prayer secret, and now she must 
have no rest till every man was made acquainted with it. Of course 
every good Christian must be anxious to give the poor girl rest by 
spreading this important prayer, and here it is : ' God greet thee, 
Mary. God greet thee, Mary. Oh, Mary, I greet thee thirty- 



EDUCATION. 495 

three thousand times ! Oh, Mary ! I greet thee as the archangel 
Gabriel greeted thee. It rejoices thee in thy heart, and me in my 
heart, that the archangel Gabriel has brought the heavenly saluta- 
tion. Ave Maria!'" 

But the most extraordinary is the — 

ROMANUS BUCHLEIN 

Vor 

Gott der Herr bewahre meine Seelc, 

meinen Aus-und Eingang; von 

nun an bis in alle Ewigkeit. 

Amen. Halleluja. 

Gedruckt in Venedig. 

The Little Roman Book. Before God the Lord keep my soul, my 
going out and my coming in, from now till all eternity. Amen. Halleluia. 
Printed in Venice. 

This little book of forty-eight pages consists of a number of 
prayers and recipes to put down and bless us from all evils; and 
if it only verified a hundredth part of its assertions would be the 
greatest gift to mankind that ever came upon earth. There is 
first a morning prayer which a man must pronounce when on 
travel, and it will preserve him from all evil. If a man has a sore 
mouth and throat, let him use this form and it is a certain remedy. 
Job travelled through the country: he had his staff in his hand. 
God the Lord met him and said, " Job, why art thou so sorrow- 
ful?" "Ah, God!" he answered, "how can I be otherwise than 
sorrowful, I have such a sore throat and mouth." God said to 
Job, " There runs a stream in the valley there which shall heal 
thee, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
Amen." This must be pronounced three times in the morning 
and three in the evening; and as you say "It shall heal thee," 
you must blow three times into the child's mouth. Let no mother 
henceforth suffer her child to smart with the thrush. But that 
worst of mortal pains the tooth-ache is equally easily got rid of. 
St. Peter stood under an oak bush. Our dear Lord Jesus said to 
him, " Peter, why so sorrowful?" Peter said, "Why should I not 
be sorrowful, for I have a horrible tooth-ache." " Go down to the 
earth," said the Lord Jesus, " and take water in thy mouth, and 
spout it out again upon the ground. Cross thyself three times. 



496 EDUCATION. 

Amen." Here is a defence against fire. " Take a black hen out 
of its nest, morning or evening; cut off its head; throw it on the 
earth; cut out its stomach; leave its contents in. Take a piece 
of a maiden's chemise, as large as a plate. Wrap these together. 
Take heed that thou get an egg that was laid on Good Friday; 
roll these things altogether with wax; put them in a pipkin, cover 
it, and bury it under thy door-sill; and, with God's help, so long 
as a piece of this remains in the house, though fire was raging 
both before and behind it, not a spark should injure thee or thy 
children. Or if a sudden fire burst out, take a whole maiden's 
chemise, roll it up, and fling it into the fire. It is a certain 
remedy. Or write these cabalistic letters on each side of a plate, 
and throw it into the fire, and it will immediately and obediently 
go out. 



s. 


A. 


T. 


O. 


R. 


A. 


R. 


E. 


P. 


O. 


T. 


E. 


N. 


E. 


T. 


O. 


P. 


E. 


R. 


A. 


R. 


O. 


T. 


A. 


S." 



This form of letters is an equal protection to cattle, written up over 
their stall, against witchcraft and devil's work. To free and make 
secure both man and beast from witches who bewitch the cattle, 
from bad men and spirits who in the night plague both old and 
young people, affix this on the stall, or write it on the bedstead — 
" Trottenkopf, I forbid thee my house and my yard, my stable and 
cowhouse. That thou comest not into my house, begone into 
another, or climb every hill in the country, count every hedge- 
stake, walk over every water, before thou returnest; then will the 
dear day come again into my house? In the name of the Father, 
etc. Amen." 

To drive away ghosts and all sorts of witchcraft, this form is 
invincible — 

I. 
N. I. R. 

I. 

Sanctus Spiritus. 

I. 

N. I. R. 

I. 

Let this defVnd us here, in time and in eternity. Amen. 



EDUCATION. 497 

Against all ill-luck and danger in the house — Sanct Mattheus, 
Sanct Marcus, Sanct Lucas, Sanct Johannes.* To preserve house 
and yard from sickness and thieves, — 

Ito, alo Massa Dando Baudo, III. Amen. 
I. R. N. R. I. 

If any evil person has caused a cow to go off in her milk, give 
three spoonsful of the first milk to the cow, and say, " If any one 
asks thee what has become of the milk, say, Nimmfam has been 
here, and I have eaten it in the name of the Father, etc." Or 
write on three strips of paper, 

J. Kreuz Jesu Christi Milch goss. 
J. Kreuz Jesu Christi Wasser goss. 
J. Kreuz Jesu Christi Haben goss. 

Take these three strips, some milk from the ailing cow, a little 
powder scraped from the scull of a poor sinner ; put all in a pot, 
boil it well, and the witch must cry out. Or take the three written 
strips in the mouth, go before the cowhouse, pronounce the words 
three times, step into the stall, and all the witches will not only 
be seen, but the cow will be well. 

Against fever : — Pray early. Twirl your shirt by the left arm 
three times round, saying three times these words, " Shirt twirl 
on, fever begone!" Name the name of him who has the fever, 
and it will leave him. To bann a thief so that he must stand still, 
be he where he may, and cannot move from the spot till you 
release him, " Three-and-thirty angels sat together, they sate about 
Mary, then said St. Daniel, ' Good wife, I see thieves. They will 
steal thy child, and I cannot hinder it/ Then said our dear Lady 
to St. Peter, ' Bind, St. Peter, bind V St. Peter said, ' I have 
bound with a band, with Christ's own hand ; if they steal my goods, 
in house, or fields, or woods; in vineyard, orchard, garden-ground; 
in chest, or meadow, they are bound. 5 Our dear Lady said, ' Let 
him steal that will, but make him there stand still ; like tethered 
goat, or like a stock, till he has counted every rock ; every rock, 
and star, and stone, that over heaven and earth are strewn, etc. etc." 
This must be pronounced on a Friday morning before sunrise; 

* To protect houses from thieves, witchcraft, etc. you see written on the doors, 
the names of the three kings of Cologne, thus — Kasper+Melchior-f Balthasor. 

K K 



498 EDUCATION. 

and to loose the bann, you must call on St. John. It is equally 
effective, to cry out upon seeing a thief making off, " On our Lord 
God his grave, three lilies wave ; the first is God's high word, the 
second is his blood; the third is his will, so thief stand thou still.'" 
If the goods are gone, it is likely that you will wish them back 
again. This then is what you have to do. You must go in a 
morning before the sun is up to a juniper bush, bend it towards 
the east with the left hand, and say, " Juniper bush, I bend thee 
and oppress thee, till the thief brings the stolen goods back/' 
You must then take a stone and lay it on the bush, and on it the 
skull of a sinner t t t (here you cross yourself thrice). As soon 
as the thief has brought the goods, you must give especial heed to 
lay the stone back in the place where you picked it up. Of the 
sinner's skull, the form says nothing further. As, however, juniper 
bushes may not be so plentiful as thieves in some places, there is 
another remedy for you. You have only then to go to a pear-tree, 
taking three nails out of a coffin, or three horse-shoe nails quite 
new, and smeared with the fat of a malefactor. Hold the nails 
towards the east, and say, u - thief, I thee by the first nail 
constrain, which I strike into thy forehead and brain; by the 
second through liver and lungs; by the third through thy foot; 
thy wrongs, with the pains of Judas, Pilot, and hell, shall follow 
where thou goest, and well, torment thee in foot, and liver, and 
brain, till the goods thou hast stolen, thou restore again." 

These valuable recipes are worth knowing to the Associations 
for the Prosecution of Felons. They must save them much in 
advertising, and rewards for discovery, and by-the-by, offer infinite 
advantages over prosecutions in our courts, where you get heavy 
lawyers' fees, but seldom your goods again. Here you have the 
goods and save your costs. But the comforts of this Catholic faith 
are infinite, and if the English once become aware of a tithe of 
them, O'Connell will certainly yet live to see high mass in West- 
minster Abbey. In this one little book you have remedies for all 
mortal evils. If you want always to win at play, you have only to 
bind on the arm with which you throw, the heart of a bat with red 
silk. There are forms for you against all — shooting, cutting and 
maiming, housebreaking, robbery, murder; against all evils that 
can happen to your cattle. You can bless your gun, by " Christ's 



EDUCATION. 499 

five wounds good, and his rose-coloured blood," so that it shall 
always kill, and you can bind off anybody from killing your game. 
You may so cut a stick, saying the proper formula at the time, 
that it will thrash your enemy let him be where he will, and as far 
off as he will. You can compel a Judge to judge your cause aright; 
no trifling matter. You can stop the most inveterate bleeding by 
writing the names of the four rivers of Paradise — Pison, Gihon, 
Hiddekel, and Phrat ; and laying them in the first book of Moses, 
second chapter, and verses 11, 12, 13, and 14. To bless weapons 
and make them invincible you must call on the three kings, Caspar, 
Melchior, and Balthazer; the archangel St. Uriel; the Twelve 
Patriarchs; the whole host of heaven, and the saints who are num- 
berless ; concluding this extensive, but invaluable invocation, which 
probably was the secret of all Buonaparte's wonderful success, with 
these words — Sapa. R. tarn. Tetragammaten Angeli. Jesus Naza- 
renus Rex Judeorum. 

Such are the contents of the books which at this day are bought, 
read, and believed, by the Catholic peasantry of Germany. Who 
shall, after this, fear the education of the people, for all these 
people are taught in the national schools? Kerner, who has gone 
amongst the people as their doctor, and is particularly interested in 
these things, says that nothing has surprised him so much as the 
firm faith still of the German peasantry in everything belonging to 
witchcraft, appearances of the devil, and belief in hidden treasures. 
Even in villages newly settled, this last point of belief is singularly 
as strong as in the oldest ones. 

Besides these books, are plenty of "Dream-books," "Books of 
Fate," "Fortune-telling Books, by pricking with a Pin;" "Egyp- 
tian Secrets for Man and Beast;" "Love-letter Writers for both 
Sexes," etc. They have scores of cheap little books, such as " The 
Invaluable Lock in the African Cave Xaxa;" the " History of 
Dr. Faustus;" "Dead Laughter," a German Joe Miller; "Aha- 
suerus, the Wandering Jew;" "The Three Miller's Daughters," 
a dreadful Blue-Beard story; "The Atrocities of the Turks against 
the Greeks;" "The Wars of Buonaparte," equally popular; "Schin- 
derhannes the Bobber," etc. etc. 

With such wild, dismal, and dreadful stories, do the German 
Bauers amuse their long winter evenings. But besides these they 

k r2 



500 EDUCATION. 

have a class of a much higher character. Stories which have come 
down from the good old times of simplest faith and chivalrous 
adventure, and which, while they are as romantic as possible, are 
full of a fine poetry, and of exalted sentiments. Such are "The 
History of Griseldis and the Mark-Graf Walther;" the Patient 
Grizel of Bocaccio and Chaucer ; " The Holy Genoveva •" " The 
Emperor Octavianus ;" " Fortunatus with his Cap;" " The Horned 
Siegfried;" "Tristan and Isalde;" " The Beautiful Melusina," a sea 
wonder, and the daughter of King Helmas; " The Fair Magelona;" 
"The Four Heymon's Children;" "Roland's Three Pages;" 
" Schneeweisschen," etc. etc. So beautiful are these old stories, 
that Tieck, Immermann, and others, have re-written many of them, 
but the people still prefer their old versions. Not only they, but 
children of all ranks, read them with the utmost enthusiasm, and 
you may see the faces of grave and learned professors kindled with 
great animation as they recal the rapture with which they used to 
read of the Four Heymon's Children riding forth on the good horse 
Beyard; of the trials of Genoveva, or Griseldis; how Octavianus 
avenged himself on the traitor who brought so much trouble on his 
empress and his children ; or how Peter with the silver keys, after 
all his wanderings and adventures, won his beautiful and good 
Magelona, and lived long with her, as the noble Graf of Provence.* 
When the simple people have wept and wondered enough over 

* Stilling, in his Life, describes the effect which these books had upon his 
imagination, and it is easy to see in the plentiful feeding of the minds of the German 
children with all this mass of Romances, Sagas, and Miirchen, the origin of the 
dreaming, idealizing, and compared with the English, less matter-of-fact character of 
the German. " Stilling was allowed to read pleasant histories, easily comprehended 
by a child, as ' The Emperor Octavianus with his Wife and Sons,' ' The Beautiful 
Melusina,' and the like. Hence came it that his whole soul began to entertain itself 
with idealities ; his imagination was excited ; the heroes of old with their over- 
charged virtues became his models, and crimes inspired him with abhorrence. In 
the orchard, and a strip of wood adjoining, where he daily played in fine weather, 
he created utterly ideal scenes. There was an Egyptian wilderness; a bush was 
exalted into a cave, where he represented St. Anthony, and prayed enthusiastically. 
In one part of this imaginary region was the Well of Melusina; there was Turkey, 
where the Sultan and his daughter, the lovely Marcibilla lived; there the castle of 
Montalban, in which dwelt Reinhold, etc. To these places he made daily pilgrimages ; 
no creature can imagine the pleasure he enjoyed. His spirit flowed over ; he stam- 
mered forth rhymes and had poetical fits. This life continued till his tenth year." 
pp. 66-7. 



EDUCATION. 501 

these, they read others over which to laugh. "Tyll Eulenspicgel," 
or as in our old translation, " Howler-glass," the mischievous wag 
who puts the whole country into confusion by taking every one 
literally at their word; " Renard the Fox;" " The Seven Swabians," 
a good-humoured quiz on Swabian simplicity; "The Schildburgers," 
the story which we have naturalized as "The Wise Men of Gotham." 
A new and much handsomer edition of these is now publishing, 
more, however, for the general reader than for the Bauers. 

These, with "Tales of Giants," "Henry the Lion," "Hir- 
landa," " Helena," "Joachim and Anna," "Duke Ernest," and 
others as romantic; with their Legends, Sagas, and Marchen 
innumerable, are the people's literature of Germany. They cer- 
tainly form a striking contrast to what is circulated amongst the 
people in England, and we doubt whether the Society for the 
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge would not awfully shake its head 
at them. They belong, however, to the history and genius of the 
people, who find enough of the dry and common-place in their 
daily labour, and certainly spread a simple, high, and unworldly 
feeling amongst them, if they do nothing more. To all those who 
have augured the most astonishing revolutions from the general 
education of a people, they present a subject of curious cogitation. 






(gy&tPTlt^ 



RELIGION. 



Ach ! Lieb und Treu ist hin, die Gottesfureht erkaltet, 
Der Glaub ist abgethan, Bestandigkeit veraltet. 

Johannes Rist, 1667. 



Ah ! love and truth are gone, the fear of God waxed cold, 
Faith is worn fairly out, and stedfastness grown old. 

There is nothing in Germany which surprises an Englishman more, 
or is less satisfactory to him, than the state of religion. One is 
not prepared to find the sober, domestic, imaginative, and philo- 
sophical Germans like the light, and by their philosophers unchris- 
tianized, French, comparatively little regardless of the decorum of 
keeping the Sabbath. But the first things which strike us are 
the open shops, the mechanics at work, and the crowded theatres, 
public-houses, and dancing-rooms. Shops, though not generally 
kept open, are so in most towns; in some more, in some less; in 
some to a very great extent. This is neither religious nor philo- 
sophical, for a Sunday, as a day of rest and relaxation, is one of 
the most wise and salutary of institutions, independent of religion, 
which can possibly be adopted, and of which every labouring crea- 
ture ought to have the benefit. But, besides in shops, a great deal 
of work goes on. Painters and joiners you find very soberly at 
work in the houses. A great number of tradesmen seem to choose 
this day especially for sending out all sorts of things for your 
approbation, particularly parcels of books; and in company, ladies 
are as busy with their knitting as ever. Theatres on those days 
give their best pieces, and dancing-saloons and public-houses are 
crowded to excess. 



RELIGION. 503 

These are things which shock the ideas of our countrymen; 
but so far as amusement is concerned, the Germans, who regard 
religion as a thing cheerful in itself, and intended for the happiness 
of man, hold it more natural that a day more particularly set 
apart for God's worship should not the less be devoted to the 
enjoyment of his creatures. That, according to Christ's own 
declaration, the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
sabbath. However far these notions may square with ours, we 
begin to look a little further into religious affairs, and we are again 
surprised. Instead of that numerous variety of sects, as amongst 
us, we find almost the whole population included under the two 
great denominations of Catholic and Protestant. In some states, 
as Austria and Bavaria, Catholicism prevails; in others, Protes- 
tantism; and again in others, the two parties are pretty equally 
balanced. Pietists they have, in the north, a great number; but 
these are merely people of more lively religious feeling and devo- 
tional practice, still belonging to the Protestant church. They have 
some settlements of the Hernnhuters and some Anabaptists; and 
these are nearly all the separatists from the established Protestant 
church, though the Hernnhuters, like the Methodists in England, 
do not allow themselves to be separatists. Formerly they had the 
old Lutherans, who retained the old papal gown and burnt lights 
on the altar, and the Reformed Lutheran ; but these, with a sequa- 
city amazing to us, have voluntarily, or on the recommendation of 
the respective governments, or under a certain degree of compul- 
sion, mostly united under one form, and are styled the Evangelical 
Lutheran church. 

To our ideas, accustomed to see the pugnacity with which every 
different shade of opinion is maintained in England, the fire of 
religious zeal there, and the habit of deeming the difference of 
opinion in a single dogma or rite a sufficient ground for a separate 
sect, it is marvellous that men holding many different opinions on 
religious subjects can consent to preach from the same pulpit, or 
to sit under such a ministry. But the Germans hold mere variety 
of opinion on different points as belonging to the right of private 
judgment, but not as authorising a variety of separations. Still 
this is wonderful to us; and we regard it as a greater evidence 
of the spirit of conformity impressed on them by long obedience to 



504 RELIGION. 

arbitrary government than of their religious zeal. When we look 
a little deeper, we see other causes, and still less satisfactory ones. 
There is a vast amount of indifferentism and disbelief. 

The fact is, that, to an awful extent, the Germans have become 
philosophized out of their religion. The Illuminati of Germany 
boasted of having systematized infidelity, and of being the real 
preparers of the French Revolution. The French have boasted 
of this for them. In a pamphlet of 1795, "Cri de la Raison," 
it is said of them, " Ces Illumines d'Allemagne, dont les Jacobins 
de la France ne sont qu'une emanation." Till Mirabeau had 
imported the Illuminatismus from Germany, where he had actually 
been as a spy of the French ministry, and where he had fallen in 
with the Illuminati of Berlin, with the celebrated bookseller Nicolai 
at their head, and with Mauvillon in Brunswick, the French had 
no organized corporation for the propagation of infidelity. Their 
wits and philosophers maintained a sort of random and discon- 
nected fire — a sort of guerilla war of ridicule and mockery on 
Christianity. But the Germans had, in their usual methodical and 
earnest manner, gone more unitedly to work. Already in 1776 the 
Society of the Illuminati had been founded by Professor Weishaupt 
at Ingoldstadt; and this body was now actively and widely in steady 
operation when Mirabeau was introduced to it. He conveyed the 
grand machinery to France. It was eagerly adopted, especially 
by Philip Egalite, the father of the present king, and Holbach, the 
author of the "Systeme de la Nature;" and in that hour Jacobinism 
had its birth. What a retribution did Germany receive for this 
fatal gift ! What a monster that Jacobinism soon grew into ! The 
volcano of the revolution, into whose inner heart the infernal fire 
had thus been first thrust by German hands, kindled, heaved, 
thundered, burst forth, and with its fiery ruin not only covered all 
France, but Germany and all Europe. No people however suffered 
more humiliation and devastation than the Germans. They were 
slaughtered like sheep; their ancient military fame laid in the 
dust; their ancient independence annihilated; a haughty conqueror 
stood over them, and turned their dishonoured swords against one 
another. 

Yet, spite of this terrible chastisement, the Germans have still 
clung with a fatal fondness to this passion for Paganism. From 



RELIGION. 505 

the moment that Kant promulgated his doctrines of Experience* 
and Pure Reason, they have pushed those doctrines, legitimately 
or illegitimately, to the utter extinction of Christianity, especially 
their philosophers Fichte and Hegel; while others, like Schleier- 
macher, have endeavoured to Platonize it. Those sects which have 
ceased to be discernible in the outward form of the church, have 
flourished nevertheless amongst the philosophers and theologians. 
Rationalists, or those who renounced all belief in the miraculous 
portions of the Scriptures, have been arrayed against the Super- 
naturalists, or those who retained more or less of this belief; and 
fierce war has raged from pulpits, philosophical chairs, and the 
press. But the Rationalists have gradually gained ground. Paulus, 
who published a " Life of Christ," in which it was endeavoured to 
reconcile the Christian faith with the explanation of the scriptural 
miracles on natural principles, has been cast into the shade by 
Strauss, whose "Leben Jesu" (Life of Christ) has collected and 
arranged all the most celebrated arguments of the sceptics against 
the miracles, and has, according to his disciples, for ever levelled 
the whole fabric of scriptural revelation to the dust. 

It is melancholy to discover to what a vast extent these doctrines 
have spread amongst the rising and student generation of Germany. 
These take their opinions of the Christian religion not from the 
pulpit, nor the Bible itself, but from the philosophical chair; and 
those who are aware how great is the veneration of the German for 
anything in the shape of philosophy, and how sensitive he is to 
public opinion, ought not to be surprised at the ravages which 
Rationalism has made amongst the educated classes of Germany. 
This trial and sifting of Christianity is beyond all question the 
most severe to which it has ever yet been subjected. The French 
attacked it by witticism and ridicule — sharp and dazzling weapons, 
but no arguments. They produce a vivid influence on the imagi- 

* Kant's doctrine, that we should proceed in philosophical and especially meta- 
physical inquiries on the firm basis of our own experience, is in itself, and so applied, 
a sound axiom ; but as pushed by others, and applied to the historical proofs of a 
religion, amounts to the gross absurdity of denying the existence of every thing 
which moves or lives beyond our own narrow circle. On this principle, a toad in 
the heart of a rock or of an oak tree, where, as it has often been found, it must have 
lived for many years, probably for ages, must be pronounced a great philosopher if 
it concluded that there was no world at all. 



506 RELIGION. 

nation for a time; but when the earnest mind comes to search 
steadily for itself, that effect vanishes. When, however, a deep- 
thinking, solemn, and philosophical people, like the Germans, set 
all their strongest intellects to root out every belief in revelation 
by the shrewdest and most subtle philosophical arguments; when 
they collect from every nation the most tried weapons of scepticism; 
when the Encyclopedists of France, and Bolingbroke, Hobbs, and 
Hume, of England, are enlisted in the cause; when all, in fact, 
which has been urged with most effect against scriptural revelation 
is laboriously built up into a system, and solemnly honoured with 
the name of Philosophy — who cannot perceive to what a wide and 
permanent extent the mischief must take root? What young 
German student, with the German fear of public opinion and phi- 
losophic ridicule tremblingly alive in him, when he hears that 
Christianity is unphilosophical, that the greatest minds of his 
nation have pronounced miracles to be but the fables of ages of 
superstition and barbarism, will dare to believe Christianity any 
longer? 

But there is no occasion to attack Christianity openly, and with 
the bitterness which the French did, from press or cathedra. This 
would not become the quiet decorum of German manners and 
German philosophy, and is besides unnecessary. Throw down the 
scaffolding of revelation, and it falls of itself. The Germans, there- 
fore, still admit and admire the moral code, — the great doctrines 
of Christ; just as they admit the fine psychology of Plato. It is 
easy to see that a more fatal and effective assault on Christianity 
never was made than by this German philosophy. Accordingly, 
you hear every day the young men speak of it as a Mythe, like 
those of Greece, Rome, Persia, and India; and of Christ as a great 
religious philosopher, like Confucius, Budha, or Zoroaster; only 
greater and more successful, as he benefited by their going before 
him, and by his greater conception of the true nature and needs 
of man. The admixture of miracle in the history of the Jews is 
owing exactly, say they, to the same causes as that in the early 
histories of Greece and Rome. It is that incident to all people in 
distant credulous ages, and in their early career, before the suffi- 
cient advance of science and civilization. But you do not merely hear 
this daily in conversation, — you trace it in the literature and habits 



RELIGION. 507 

of the people. Between the English and German literature there 
is no greater difference than in the religious tone of the two. In 
the English, in works of all kinds, you feel a high but healthy 
religious spirit. In all our great poets, not excepting Byron and 
Shelley, professed sceptics, you feel it. Byron and Shelley furnish, 
some of the noblest passages of a religious and worshiping tone in 
the language. In all our miscellaneous works, not professedly 
religious, you feel the same. But it is very different in the German. 
Many are much surprised to find no trace of Christianity in Heine; 
but this is by no means wonderful — it would be a wonder were it 
there — for Heine is a Jew; and what is very remarkable, the greater 
part of the writers styling themselves Das junge Deutschland, The 
Young Germany, in imitation of La jeune France, are Jews. But 
no one who has read much of the German poetry and general litera- 
ture but must have remarked the absence of that religious tone which 
prevails in the best authors in England. Who finds it in Goethe 
or Schiller, in Lessing or Uhland, or a host of others ? Much fine 
fancy and feeling, much worship of freedom and romantic chivalry, 
but very little worship of another kind. Herder is an exception. 
But the general rule is, that German books are either purely 
literary, or purely and professedly religious. The truth is, that 
in books as in common life, from the scepticism and pure reason 
which prevail, anything which assumes a tone of religion is imme- 
diately ridiculed as Pietism or Muckerism, as every thing of a more 
zealous kind used to be dubbed in England, Methodism. 

Step out of books, and enter the Protestant churches. Who 
are the hearers? A great body of ladies — for luckily the ladies 
are not philosophized — whose truer interests and more devotional 
temperament keep them still adherents of the sublime and conso- 
latory truths of Christianity; a considerable number of the common 
people; and a very, very thin sprinkling of gentlemen. 

This anti-christian philosophy then, is the great corroding 
canker of Germany. Much of its growth may be attributed, no 
doubt, to a conscientious but erroneous inquiry after truth amongst 
its philosophers; much more to the great ambition of creating a 
philosophical reputation — of becoming the founder of a system, 
and the head of a school. If we look, therefore, through the 
history of German philosophy, what a succession of bursting 



508 RELIGION. 

bubbles it is! Every few years has its great gun of philosophy; 
the new man, with his new system, which explodes all before it, 
as the next, in a few more years, explodes it. Little reputation 
for acute genius or originality is to be acquired by merely illustrating 
and maintaining what is already known and excellent; to acquire 
a name it is necessary to start a new wonder. Hence every ten 
years has its new system of metaphysics, and yet when we have 
gone through them all we find that we know very little more than 
we did. That we have certain faculties, and feelings, and passions, 
was no secret to us; of their origin, mode of existence, and 
duration, each man has his theory, and in this world we get no 
warrant for its being anything more than his theory. As to the 
theological philosophers of Germany, there never were words which 
more strikingly applied to them, than those of the book they fight 
against: "men who darken counsel with many words without 
knowledge;" and, "hewers of cisterns, broken cisterns which hold 
no water." When they have created a whole legion of these 
cisterns, or systems, we find not one in the heap worth an empty 
nut, when compared with the grand philosophic system of Christ. 
He is still the great Philosopher. In his system you find all so 
sublime, so lucid, so simple; so admirably adapted to all the wants 
and to the very constitution of human nature; so coinciding with 
our best feelings; so animating to the pursuit of all that is noble 
in life and consolatory in death — that no other philosopher is fit to 
carry his shoes after him. He who would take this system, and 
boldly expound its doctrines — not as now metamorphosed and 
politically disguised in modern churches; but as they stand, pure 
and glorious, in the New Testament itself — who would exhibit 
them as the great principles of human freedom, human benevolence, 
human purity, and ennoblement of our whole moral and intel- 
lectual being, might not gain a fleeting popularity as the best 
cistern-hewer of the day, but would render more service to genuine 
science and the general interests of man, in one age, than all the 
speculations on our intellectual constitution will render to the end 
of time. Even on the Kantian principle, that experience is the 
test of truth, there is no truth so great or beneficent as that of the 
Christian religion; for there is nothing to which the experience of 
all the civilized world bears such testimony, as to the magnificent 



RELIGION. 509 

effects of the Christian doctrines on the advance of civilization 
itself, and on the establishment of every principle of political and 
juridical justice and social virtue. 

To what a condition this sceptical tendency has brought 
philosophy itself in Germany, we may learn from the first Lecture 
of Schelling, at Berlin, already published. He asserts that the 
public does not trouble itself about philosophy while it is in its 
infancy, or in its general progress. The philosopher makes it the 
business of his life— all others wait till philosophy arrives at its 
end ; then it is that it first becomes important to the world through 
its conclusions. That the most utter inexperience cannot imagine 
that the world is prepared to receive any result which is offered to 
it as that of a profound and strict process of science, without 
regard to the nature of that result; or it must, according to circum- 
stances, subject itself often to essential immorality, or to doctrines 
which tear up the very foundations of morals. Nobody expects 
this, and there never has been a philosopher who has imagined 
such a thing. The world does not pretend to understand the 
principles, or to follow all the subtleties and intricacies of evidence; 
but it satisfies itself simply with maintaining, that a philosophy 
which arrives at pernicious conclusions cannot possibly be sound 
in its principles. 

" Was romische Sittenlehrer vom Niitzlichen gesagt : ' Nihil utile 
nisi quod honestum/ musse auch von dem Wahren gesagt werden. 
Was nun aber in Bezug auf das Sittliche jeder zugesteht, das muss 
auch von alien anderen, das menschliche Leben zusammenhalt- 
enden Ueberzeugungen, also vorziiglich von den religiosen gelten. 
Keine Philosophie, die auf sich etwas halt, wird zugestehen, dass 
sie in Irreligion ende. Die Philosophie befindet sich nun aber 
grade in der Lage, dass sie in ihrem B-esultat religios zu seyn ver- 
sichert, und dass man ihr diess nicht zugiebt, namentlich ihre 
Deductionen christlicher Dogmen nur fiir Blendwerk gelten l'asst. 
Diess sagen selbst einige ihrer, getreuen oder ungetreuen Sch tiler. 
Wie es sich verhalten moge, ist vorerst gleichgultig: genug dass 
der Verdacht erregt worden, die Meinung vorhanden ist. 

Das Leben behalt aber am Ende immer Recht, und so droht 
denn zuletzt von dieser Seite wirklich der Philosophie selbst Gefahr. 
Schon stehen sie bereit, die gegen eine bestimmte Philosophie zu 



510 RRLIGION. 

eifern vorgeben, aber im Grande alle Philosophie meinen und in 
ihrem Herzen sagen: Philosophie soil iiberhaupt nicht niehr seyn." 
" What the Roman moralist says of the useful : ' Nihil utile nisi 
quod honestum/ must also be said of the true; and what each 
asserts in regard to the moral, that applies also to all those other 
convictions which bind together human society, and pre-eminently 
to the religious. No philosophy which has any regard to its own 
reputation will assert that it will end in irreligion. But philosophy 
finds itself at this moment in exactly this situation, that it asserts 
its conclusions to be religious, and that this is not conceded to it; 
but its deductions of Christian dogmas are suffered only to pass as 
jugglery. This say even some of its true or untrue disciples. How 
far this is really the case, is at present of no consequence; it is 
enough that the suspicion has been raised — that the opinion is 
abroad. 

"But life always in the end receives its due; and thus conies 
now, even from this side, danger to philosophy itself. Already 
stand those prepared who profess only to aim at a particular 
philosophy; but, at bottom, mean all philosophy, and in their 
hearts say there shall be no more philosophy at all." 

Schelling announces, like an old prophet, that he believes Pro- 
vidence has preserved his life that he may raise philosophy out of 
this degraded and perilous state. That he will give up no single 
inch of moral ground which philosophy has gained, but hopes 
eventually to shew where it has swerved from its own principles. 
We shall see. In the mean time, it is fortunate that the truth of 
Christianity is a question not of metaphysics, but of historical and 
moral evidence; and, whether Schelling succeed or not — whether 
philosophy, so called, shall stand or fall— men of sound mind and 
plain common sense will take up the Bible, and judge whether it 
contains sufficient proof of its being an authentic history. Whether 
that series of prophecy which so wonderfully commenced with the 
commencement of the race, nearly six thousand years ago, and so 
wonderfully was carried on, from age to age, through the mouths 
and pens of so many different men, could be the invention of any 
individual of a genius however prodigious, or the conspiracy of a 
number; and whether in Christ these prophecies meet their legi- 
timate fulfilment. The man who can read of Moses laying down 



RELIGION. 511 

to the Israelites, before they were, in fact, a nation, before they 
entered their promised land, the whole history of that nation, and 
describing the very horrors which should accompany its end and 
the destruction of its capital, and can doubt the authority of the 
Old Testament and the legitimacy of the New, will not believe 
Schelling's finest reasoning. He has Moses and the Prophets, and 
if he believe them not, neither would he though one should rise 
from the dead. He who renounces the miraculous portion of the 
Jewish history, renounces the whole; for it is built entirely on a 
miraculous foundation. Take that away, and you connect its great 
actors with madmen or impostors. The attempts to do this are 
vain, and may well inspire the public with a contempt for such 
jugglery. There is no half-way house on this path — it is the 
facilis descensus Averni; and therefore the Catholics find sufficient 
occasion to say that Protestantism is but a slippery highway to 
Deism. The German philosophers are so conscious of this, that 
they tell us that the English will become as sceptical when they 
become as philosophical. Luckily we have already gone through 
the deistical fermentation of Bolingbroke, Hobbs, Tindal, Hume, 
and the contagious atmosphere of our lively neighbours across the 
Channel, and the sound sense of the nation has preserved it. The 
time, too, we may hope, is not far off when the same disease will 
have run its course in Germany. The Germans are a people who 
carry everything to an extreme; and this comfortless philosophy 
has probably nearly reached its acme.* Nothing can be a more 
auspicious augury of this than the intense interest raised by Schel- 
ling's lectures, and the jubilance of a large party who see in him 
the apostle of a more sound and honourable philosophical faith. 

* The crisis has arrived. Since writing this, it is announced in the Allgemeine 
Zeitung, that a numerous body of the disciples of the new philosophy in Berlin and 
Holstein have resolved to declare themselves. To separate publicly from the church, 
and unite themselves into a society called " Die Freien." The Free. They do this 
on the avowed ground that, disbelieving Christianity, they should justly incur the 
charge of hypocrisy were they longer to continue in apparent adherence to the church. 
They declare their conviction that the miracles of the Scriptures on which Chris- 
tianity is based, are fictious, and that the human understanding has itself sufficient 
sagacity to direct it in all spiritual matters. This is well. It is one thing to write, 
and another to act. Infidelity has no common principle of union. Its disciples 
always have, and always will, render themselves ridiculous when they band together 
openly. The French infidels rendered themselves worse — monsters of anarchy and 
carnage. 



©K1A1PTIK 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. — POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 

We have traversed a good portion of Germany, and taken a compre- 
hensive glance at its people and their life; and we must testify that 
few finer countries lie on the face of the earth. A land of noble 
rivers and beautiful hills; of forests free to the foot of the wanderer, 
lovely in the sunshine of summer; their green glades rich in 
traditions, and their leaves whispering poetry in every wind. A 
land of plains cultivated like a garden; and of simple, swarming, 
indefatigable people. Germany is a country which, as the land of 
a distinguished portion of our ancestors — as the ancient, common 
source of much of our language — of the spirit of our constitution, 
and of many of our legal and social institutions, must always be 
interesting to us. It is a country which, to the British poet, anti- 
quarian, and philologist, must ever be a rich mine; for we cannot 
now live long in it without every day seeing more and more, in the 
practices and speech of the people, the origin of many of our ideas, 
customs, and terms, which was before unknown to us. In the 
language of the common people, and especially in the Plat-deutsch, 
it is astonishing to find, after a lapse of a thousand years, how much 
remains which has been transplanted into and exists in ours, 
especially in the language of the common people of England. But 
it is when we look on the map of Europe, and consider the location, 
the extent, the population, and character of this country, in refer- 
ence to these circumstances in the other nations of Europe — it is 
then that we see how important it must be for England to cultivate 
a memory of the ancient kinship, and an alliance of friendship, as 
well as interest with Germany. Of all the Continental countries, 
it is with Germany that we have been oftenest compelled to alliance 
by the intrigues and assumptions of other nations. It is with 



POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 513 

Germany that least of all, through our whole history, have we had 
wars and rivalry. Across the Channel lies restless France; a nation 
like ourselves, too active and ambitious to live so near us without 
perpetual heart-burnings against us. But France is at the same 
time the nation which has not merely bickered with us, but has 
been the grand lump of leaven in the kneading-trough of Europe. 
Vain, fond of martial glory, ambitious of dominance, France has 
been from age to age also something more than leaven; it has been 
the political volcano of Europe, hurling forth on all sides its burn- 
ing cinders and scalding lava. No country has felt this so much 
as Germany : it is probable that none is destined still to feel it more. 
Whether war, however, once more be waged, or the better know- 
ledge of national and international interests shall prolong peace, 
nothing is more obvious than that at present it is the life only of 
Louis Philippe which gives Europe quietness; and that the moment 
that his firm and wise hand drops from the reins of government, the 
fiery spirit of France will burst forth in extraordinary forms. By 
the union of England and Germany, however, must peace be then 
achieved, or war successfully waged. It was by this union that 
we lived through the most terrible explosion which France ever 
made ; it was by this that we put down the most terrible conqueror 
that it or any country ever sent forth. 

But besides this, there is no other Continental nation with 
which, spite of our national dissimilarities, we have so many points 
of coincidence; or so kindred a character in literature, science, and 
social life. In mercantile matters how much better had it been if 
we had earlier adopted a more liberal system towards this country. 
With a population of forty millions — if we include the states of 
Austria, exclusive of the Italian ones, of sixty millions — almost the 
whole of which are agricultural, and by no means naturally dis- 
posed to manufacturing, what a field was here for our commerce! 
We had only to consent to feed our hungry manufacturers with 
their corn and cattle, and they offered in return their sixty millions 
of backs to clothe, besides the importation of various of our colo- 
nial articles of produce. By the grossest political stupidity we 
have shut out their corn, and starved our millions of spinners. 
We have excited a system of counteraction: Germany has closed 
itself to us, and become a rival manufacturing country. Every 

L L 



514 CONCLUDING REMARKS: 

town of our manufacturing districts stands at this moment a fright- 
ful spectacle, upbraiding us, in the attitude of Chartism and the 
language of despair, with our irremediable folly. 

To those of our countrymen who now visit Germany — and how 
numerous are they every year — Germany must nevertheless still 
present itself as our most desirable political ally. It has now 
started actively on a new career. The dispensations through which 
it has passed during the last half century seem thoroughly to have 
aroused it. It aims to strengthen itself by internal union, and 
to raise itself by the promotion of manufactures, commerce, and 
scientific improvements. This is what it calls its physical tendency, 
in contradistinction to its long metaphysical one. Not only the 
sufferings of the past, but the menaces of the present, compel it to 
union. The pressure from without creates this tendency. France 
in the south and Russia in the north keep alive the salutary fear 
which binds its states together. The Bund, or Confederation, 
established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, in which the nine- 
and-twenty states of Germany that survived the concussions of 
the Revolution united themselves, supplies the place of the old 
Imperial union; — as far as outward defence is concerned, no doubt, 
should it come to be tried, much better; for before the French 
Revolution the empire had become a mere figure, — a country which 
contained as many independent princes as there are days in the 
year, and nobles nearly as independent as these princes to the 
amount of two thousand. The Bund constitutes also a court for 
the maintenance of internal unity, of arbitration of claims and 
settlement of disputes amongst the associated states. True, the 
people say that this is a confederation of princes, and not of states; 
for the people have no representatives in it — no second chamber. 
It is therefore regarded with jealousy, rather as a dangerous machine 
of despotism than of popular defence; and this feeling has been 
justified by the fact, that notwithstanding the establishment by a 
Minister-Congress at Vienna in 1834 of a Schiedsgericht, or Court 
of Arbitration, between prince and people, yet it has never been 
found that the Bund would seriously entertain the complaints of a 
people against the prince, as was strikingly demonstrated in the 
destruction of the constitution of Hanover by the king. 

But placed in a better posture of external defence, the progress 



POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 515 

of Germany in political and social prosperity will assuredly be 
rapid. Already the Zoll-Verein, or Union of Duties, originally 
proposed by Bavaria, but carried into effect by Prussia, and now 
including nearly all the German states excepting Austria, Hanover, 
and the city of Hamburg, has done wonders by the abolition of 
internal impediments to the free circulation of goods from state 
to state, and the ecpialization of all duties between them, both for 
general prosperity and the growth of a feeling of real union in the 
nation. Already their railways completed, in progress, or decided 
upon, present such an extent of lines of communication, intersect- 
ing the nation in all directions, as is startling to those who have 
been accustomed to regard the Germans as slow and unenterprising. 
These are carried on with a spirit and rapidity quite admirable; 
and as fast as they are completed are crowded by the people, who 
shew every disposition to an extensive survey of, and mutual inter- 
course with, each other. Austria, with its cautious exclusiveness, 
shews itself as zealous in the laying down of railroads as any of the 
other states. In a few years Bohemia and Hungary will be traversed 
with them. The railroads already in action in Prussia and Saxony 
will unite both those of Austria and Bavaria, of the south and 
western states. There will be no great tract which will not be 
intersected by them, and connected with great lines from Paris to 
Petersburg, from Holland to northern Prussia, in one direction, and 
to Switzerland and Italy in others. Bavaria has united the Danube 
and the Hhine by a canal; and not only on these great streams, 
but on almost every river of Germany, steam is actively plying. 
Here is a sudden waking up to gigantic efforts! 

But this is only one out of many ways in which Germany has 
shewn a new spirit of life and growth. It is resolved to manufac- 
ture for its own great population, and is making rapid advances in 
this department, for which they have to thank us and our corn 
laws. Having now tasted the sweets of manufacturing, without 
having yet had the possibility of feeling the evil of its overgrowth, 
they are determined not to be allured by any changes which we 
may now make in our commercial system, to a relaxation of their 
course. On this head, however, there is reason to believe that the 
mutual attractions of a wise international system might do much 
to restore or to save to us no contemptible commerce with this 



516 CONCLUDING REMARKS: 

populous and wide country. But in the elation of manufacturing 
success, and of the success of their Zoll-Verein, they begin to plan 
a fleet, and hanker after colonies. These are all signs of a new 
spirit and a new era in Germany. It is already one of the most 
prosperous countries in Europe; and the spirit of enterprise, added 
to the indefatigable industry of its people, will ensure it a steady 
and distinguished advance. The days of its mercantile greatness, 
when, before the Thirty Years' War, its Fuggers and Welsers of 
Augsburg extended their commerce from the East Indies to the 
West, and its Hanseatic towns were connected with the business 
of the whole world, seem once more dawning. 

Nor is the ancient spirit of freedom the less awake. There 
scarcely is or ever was a people who won their freedom with their 
arms who have not been cheated out of it again by the Feather- 
foxes, as old Blucher most expressively called the diplomatists, and 
especially by those of their own governments. The Germans have 
been notorious for yielding in this way the good fortune they have 
won with their swords. When they stood in Paris with the weapons 
of victory in their hands, they treated with the French rather as 
a people still their masters than as lying under their own feet. 
That was the moment to demand restitution for all damages done 
by the French in their invasion and twenty years' plundering of 
Germany; for all their bloodshed and their insults. That was the 
moment to take indemnity for the past, and security for the future, 
by so loading and exhausting France, as should keep her quiet at 
least for a century. The opportunity was lost, and already they 
have been threatened by the French with another invasion. They 
did stipulate with the Dutch, as the price of their independence, 
that the Rhine should be free to their trade; but they suifered 
themselves to be juggled out of this essential right by a slip of the 
Feather-foxes' pen — by the words free to the sea — jusqu' a la mer, 
which the Dutch choosing to interpret to the sea, but not into it, 
clapped on enormous duties at the river mouths. In like manner 
they demanded from their respective princes, in reward of the 
restoration of their thrones with their blood, free constitutions; but 
princes are faithless stewards, who, as soon as they get into posses- 
sion of office, tread on their masters' necks, and become themselves 
the lords; — they yet look for these constitutions in vain. Even 



POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 517 

the King of Prussia, who made a similar promise on ascending the 
throne long afterwards, has never kept it.* 

This point still continues a subject of heart-burning and dis- 
cussion amongst the people. Some contend, like the prohibited 
Burschenschaft, for the restoration of the Empire, as the only 
genuine means of thorough union, and for the establishment of 
free state constitutions. This, it may safely be asserted, will never 
come to pass. Besides that the old Imperial government was itself 
of too loose a form, and pregnant with abundant evils, for under 
it grew up all that host of separate states and interests which 
paralysed Germany, and eventually laid it at the feet of France, 
Prussia is now become too great and ambitious to stand second in 
the Empire. Austria or Prussia must be annihilated before one 
or the other can be dignified with the imperial crown of Germany. 
Were one of these proposed, the lesser princes would, for the sake 
of their own thrones, oppose that power; and the result would 
probably be a war as destructive as that of the Thirty Years, and 
the falling of the whole country again an easy prey to France. 
Moreover, was the Empire actually established, the most probable 
consequence would be a great military despotism, instead of a free 
state in which offices and advantages were equally distributed. 

The aim of another party is to achieve free constitutions for the 
individual states, with a Bund to act and arbitrate for and between 
the whole, in which both princes and people shall have their repre- 
sentatives. This is the scheme which will probably eventually take 
place — a scheme which seems at once to preserve every individual 
state, with its prince, constitution, and offices, and at the same time 
binds the whole into one great and effective empire. In fact, this 
plan carried into effect would give to the constitution of the German 
nation a very near resemblance to that of the United States of 
America. They would have their separate states' governments and 
their federal government. The only difference would be that they 

* One of the best witticisms of the Eckensteher, Nante Strumpf, is made to turn 
on this. The King of Prussia, after his promise, said, " Und dass ich mein Wort 
erhalten werde, gelob ich, schwcir ich." Some one who did not hear well what the 
king said, asked Nante, and he gave it in Berlin dialect, thus: " Und dass ick mein 
Wort erhalten wcrde, glob ick schwerly ;" which, though sounding something the 
same, instead of "and that I will keep my word, I promise, I swear," — It means, 
" and that I shall keep my word, I hardly believe." 



518 CONCLUDING REMARKS: 

would have princes in their separate states, while the Americans 
have none. But these princes in such a constitution must be 
strictly limited in their prerogatives, could not be expensive, and 
their permanence as governors of the individual states would prevent 
the intrigues of parties and the bickerings of elections. Indeed, with 
such a government it is not easy to see what a people can desire more. 
But even this must be the work of time. The great powers are now 
all despotic. Those of the lesser grade which have a constitutional 
form of government are still awed by the greater powers, which 
watch them narrowly; and these, again, are watched by Russia, 
which dreads the progress of free opinion in Germany. In no state 
is the press or speech free; and there are so many circumstances 
in favour of the princes, that any one may see that they will 
not be readily overcome. In fact, the prosperity of the nation is 
inimical to its emancipation. The princes, though despotic, are 
not surrounded by a splendid and powerful aristocracy like the 
monarchy of England. These were swept away or reduced by the 
revolutionary war. The princes, therefore, with no such body- 
guard to stand between them and the people, are obliged to govern 
with mildness. They are isolated, and responsible, at least 
morally, for their own actions; and no prince in modern times has 
once dared to run violently counter to the sense of an educated 
people. If we make the King of Hanover the exception, the 
German sovereigns are popular in their own persons, and this is a 
great persuasive to obedience and acquiescence in a form of govern- 
ment not the most favourable to real freedom. Then there is no 
distress in the country; no mighty body of destitution and misery, 
as in our manufacturing districts — millions in desperation, and 
menacing change. Here, as in all Europe, exists a certain degree 
of poverty, a certain pressure of population which seeks relief in 
emigration; but on the whole, there is no country where the great 
mass of the people live in greater comfort and content. Such an 
extent of luxury, such a glittering aristocracy before their eyes, 
the restless ambition of mounting from rank to rank, have not, as 
with us, destroyed the ancient spirit of quiet enjoyment. All live 
well, but not splendidly. The greatest portion of the people, the 
peasantry, live on their own property, — live in the country all 
alike, and fully occupied with their labours. The middle classes 



POLITICS AM) PROSPECTS. 519 

again, depend, in great numbers, on government for offices in the 
state, in all departments of the administration of justice, posting, 
police, management of woods and government lands, collection of 
duties and taxes, in colleges and schools. When, therefore, there 
is no great mass of distress to create a bitterness and coalition 
against the government, but on the contrary, a great body deriving 
substantial benefits from it, who shall be the first to sacrifice his 
present enjoyments for the more intellectual luxuries of a free 
tongue and press? Who shall quarrel first with the constitution 
which affords him solid advantages, because it does not extend to 
him and others still more ? The country is not commercial enough 
to have created such a wealthy middle class as shall be inde- 
pendent enough of government, shall have cause of grievance 
enough and influence enough to lead the multitude to an attack. 
On the other hand, the government police is so complete, its 
cognizance is so extended to every part and into every matter, that 
a habit of obedience is induced which it is very difficult for any 
individual to break through. 

The natural caution of the Germans, as inherent in them as 
the love of freedom itself, operates to maintain the existing order 
of things. The momentum of distress being wanting to impel the 
wheels of reform ; and on the other hand, comfort, personal benefits, 
a vigilant police and habitual caution, casting a great weight into 
the scale of government, we may be well assured that the Germans 
will go on for years, perhaps for generations, cherishing the love 
of freedom, writing and singing its songs, sighing for freedom of 
speech and of the press without advancing much nearer to them, 
unless some great conflict of the nations should rouse them one 
day to a pitch of mighty enthusiasm. A war in Europe, begin- 
ning with France, would probably become a war, not of kings 
against kings, but of people against governments. In that case 
there would be found inflammable material of one kind or another 
in Germany, to burst out into a fierce blaze ; and it is probable, 
that if ever the Germans realize their favourite vision of constitutional 
freedom and national unity, it will be in such a moment. 

For the present, we may safely assert that there is no country 
in Europe in which there is so great an amount of comfort and 
contentment enjoyed. All are industrious, moderate in their 



520 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



desires, and disposed to enjoy themselves in a simple and unex- 
pensive sociality; — music, books, the pleasures of summer sunshine 
and natural scenery, are enjoyments amply offered and widely 
partaken. The hurry and excitement of more luxurious countries ; 
the oxygen atmosphere of such overgrown cities as Paris or London, 
have not reached even their largest capitals. Between the wild 
extremes of manufacturing misery and aristocratic splendour, their 
life lies, like one of their own plains, somewhat level; but full of 
corn, and wine, and oil ; and however the track on which they are 
advancing may lead them nearer to national greatness, it cannot 
add greatly to the national happiness. Well for the people, if for 
some acquisition of wealth and refinement they do not pay a high 
price in simple satisfaction. 



ft„ i WA 



x W 







THE END. 



London : Printed by Manning and Mason, Ivy Lane, St. Paul's. 



LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. 



FROM DESIGNS BY G. F. SARGENT. 



ENCRAVED PAGE 

1. Reinhardsbrunn, a favourite Hunting Seat of the Duke of BY 

Saxe-Coburg Evans Title 

2. Scene on the Rhine do. 1 

3. Old-fashioned Travelling Carriage do. 12 

4. Fishing on the Rhine do. 16 

5. Girls at the Fountain do. 17 

6. Peasant's Wagon Whimper 23 

7. Agricultural Implements do. 26 

8. Group of German Girls Evans 28 

9. Village Children do. 28 

10. Women Washing at the Brook do. 31 

11. Catholic Chapel in the Wood do. 39 

12. The Author's Residence at Heidelberg, with View of 

Vineyards T. Armstrong 40 

13. Women bringing Fuel, etc. from the Woods do. 45 

14. Peasants ascending the Vineyards Evans 49 

15. Girls at work in the Rhine-lands Whimper 51 

16. Apple-crushing do. 53 

17. Rural Dance Evans 57 

18. Wildboar Shooting T.Armstrong 66 

19. German Sportsman do. 84 

20. Celebration of Summer-Day Evans 85 

21. Boys Piping do. 95 

22. The Stork with Infant do. 102 

23. Religious Procession Whimper 103 

24. Wandering Handicraftsmen Armstrong 120 

25. Jolly Handworker Evans 140 






VIII EMBELLISHMENTS. 

ENGRAVED PAGE 
BY 

26. German Student T. Armstrong 141 

27. Celebration of Christmas Eve Evans 152 

28. Sledging , Landells 179 

29. Pushing Ladies in Chairs on the Ice Whimper 180 

30. Boys Sledging down a Hill Landells 183 

31. Women carrying bundles of Leaves Evans 214 

32. German Churchyard do. 224 

33. View on the Neckar do. 245 

34. Old Castle at Baden-Baden Landells 261 

35. Hirschau in Wiirtemberg Evans 268 

36. Swabian Costumes.... Whimper 269 

37. Lichtenstein Castle Evans 285 

38. Bavarian Cross do. 294 

39. Wayside Shrine do. 295 

40. Isar-Gate at Munich Whimper 311 

41. Female Burgher Costume, Munich Armstrong 337 

42. Bavarian Costumes J. Armstrong 338 

43. Tyrolean Cottage Landells 341 

44. The Pretty Kelnerin Evans 343 

45. Hay-Giants Landells 345 

46. Peasant with hollow-sided Hat Evans 346 

47. Salzburg Helmet do. 351 

48. Convent of Mblk on the Danube Landells 361 

49. View of Herrnskretschen on the Elbe do. 401 

50. Summit of the Brocken Evans 451 

51. The Snow- Plough do. £20 



